-^^ 









'"^^t-t^" 



/. " ff I ^•' \ 









', > 



A^ 







^ 'S'-' 






.:^ '^. t 



'^"; 






■**. 



'■'tA ''' '^ 



^ «^' 



>-iS- 









.^ 






^^ 






,^^' ^. 



^c 



..-^ 



^ "^.''"^ V\o-^/^; 



■'t^''^ -^ 



,^^ 



c- 



tr 

O' 




.- \\^ 



.--^ 



<^' 



A^ 















'« ^ 

-ji ™ 



^ 



A^' 



'-^" 






"oo^ 









^'^:^^>^" 



-y 



^%%^- 






% 



^^ 



v-. 



.^<^.^/r -^ 



^^/-. <^' 



a^ ^<^ 



,. S- 



■s* 



''^^\)- 






\# 









\.- 



vV^ 






•7 'P 






PROPERTY 

[TS DUTIES AND RIGHTS 

HISTORICALLY, PHILOSOPHICALLY 
AND EELiaiOUSLY REGARDED 

ESSAYS BY^ VARIOUS WRITERS 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD 



NEW EDITION 
WITH AN ADDED ESSAY 



J^etD gotk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1922 

All Bights Reserved 






\^^ 



Set up and printed. 
Published, March, 1922. 



FEINTED IN U. S. A. 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

k NEW edition of this volume of essays offers oppor- 
;uiiity for some words of preface, suggested by experi- 
mce connected with the former one. 

Appreciative as was the reception generally accorded 
our undertaking, there were certain criticisms of its 
!Cope which showed that the idea governing its plan 
n the writers ' minds was not always equally present to 
hose of its readers. Complaint was made that it dealt 
lither with too many aspects of Property or with too 
lew. In particular, separate treatment of the legal and 
jhe economic sides of the subject was desired. As 
bgards the legal aspect, its omission was due simply to 
jircumstances ; and now what was always part of the 
ichem.e is happily supplied in the new essay by Profes- 
5or W. M, Geldart. This falls naturally into the argu- 
nent and strengthens the proof of our general thesis, 
)y showing the essentially relative character of the 
ight of property even on its legal side. It has no 
privilege in our law to protect it against the control of 
he community, which, acting through the sovereign 
egislature, has power to re-fashion, to abridge, and to 
jinnu].. It is not one and immutable, but finds its place 
n a world of rights, public and private, to each of 
^hich varying boundaries are assigned from time to 
ime in accordance with changing views of public policy. 
Sven at any one time it will exist under diverse forms, 



vi PEOPERTY 

designed to further the ends, now of the individnai 
now of groups which have a narrower or wider socia^ 
significance. To add such an essay is strictly germani 
to the whole scope of the volume. 

On the other hand, to include a discussion of th'i 
application of our root idea to the actual economic 
situation, with all its complexities and disputable dataf 
is quite another matter. *^One thing at a time" is jf 
sound maxim in such a connection. The primary tasl'^ 
is to discover the true idea of property by a wide sunf 
vey of the facts of past experience and theory, in ordei* 
that it may guide our thinking as a regulative principle' 
when we come to analyse the existing social and eco: 
nomic order and consider how it may be made more 
just for all. It makes a vast difference in the long rui 
whether a man has at the back of his mind in all hij 
judgments the principle, ' ^ One has a right to do as oni 
likes with one's own," in the crude sense of what is h 
one 's power, and may so remain, without breach of tht| 
law of the land ; or, on the other hand, the idea of prop^ 
erty as a social trust or stewardship. Change of atti) 
tude here is the most ** practical" thing that can happeif 
to men. It will set each to think out for himself his o^vii 
obligations under existing conditions; and this effort 
in turn will create the atmosphere in which publi( 
measures of reform can be devised and carried out to 
the best effect. Accordingly it seemed sound in theory 
and practice not to include in the present volume an 
essay, however tentative, containing any particulai 
plan of economic reconstruction. 

Since the Essays were written a European "War ha^i' 
burst upon us : but it has only enhanced the relevancei 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION vii 

md urgency of their main idea. Indeed, it has afforded 
% most impressive object-lesson of its truth, in that we 
lave seen both public legislation and the spontaneous 
vorking of the individual's conscience acting instinct- 
vely upon it. Thus in furnishing a reasoned justifica- 
ion of the principle of the relativity of private property 

i"o the common weal, this volume can claim attention as 
I tract for these grave times. In so saying one has not 
phieiiy in mind the demands made upon each by the 
jeeds of his fellows-countrymen during the war. Com- 
paratively few, one hopes, will overlook or shirk these, 
jven under the influence of an inadequate theory as 
;o the social nature and obligations of property. One 
|hinks rather of the days yet to come after the war, 
hen the long and more prosaic task of repairing 
he fabric of society and meeting the awful wastage 
)f resources in material and vital wealth will make 
pt severer because more sustained demands upon 
patriotism. 

J There is around us at this hour a new sense of the 
lormal place of sacrifice in life, and of the enhanced 
jneaning and dignity which it gives to manhood and 
^omanhood, especially when it becomes the pervasive 
jitmosphere of a whole nation 's being. The recognition 
hat our daily life is a campaign for a high common 
3ause, mth its constant call for loyalty and discipline 
jind self-sacrifice, and its lesson that individual rights in 
property are all relative to dutiful use in that cause, is 
3eing burnt into us by experiences which must leave 
pach and all either more sensitive or more callous 
the solidarity of human life in a nation. It is in 

such a day as this that we reissue the reasoned plea 



viii PKOPEETY 

which these essays in their unity amid diversity vir-- 
tually constitute, to reconsider the social basis and char- 
acter of property and its consequent obligations. One 
immediate and appropriate result of a discerning peru- 
sal of this volume should be a fresh readiness in the! 
economically strong to shoulder the burdens of thej 
weak — the phenomenon of the cheerful tax-payer. That' 
would be a good beginning. But many further applica-j 
tions of its principle of social and economic justice will 
be necessary, if we are to reap to the full the abiding; 
fruits of that new vision of unity and mutual depend-' 
ence which flashed on us early in August 1914. 

J. V. B. 



CONTENTS 

INTEODUCTION 



FACE 



By Charles Gore, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Bishop of 

Oxford xi 

L THE HISTOEICAL EVOLUTION OF 
PROPEETY, IN FACT AND IN IDEA 

By L. T. HoBHOusE^ MA., Professor of Sociology, 

London University 1 

II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY OF 

PROPERTY 

By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, D.Litt., F.B.A., 
Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy, New College, 
Oxford; Canon of Hereford .... 35 

IIL THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE 
PROPERTY 

By A. D. Lindsay, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Balliol 

College, Oxford . . . • . . . . 69 

ix 



PEOPERTY 

IV. THE BIBLICAL AND EAELY 
CHEISTIAN IDEA OF PEOPEETY 



PAGE 



By the Rev. Vernon Baetlet, D.D. (St. Andrews), 
Professor of Church History in Mansfield College, 
Oxford 87 

V. THE THEOEY OF PEOPEETY IN 
MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 

By the Rev. A. J. Carlyle, D.Litt, Chaplain and 
Lecturer in Political Science and Economics, Uni- 
versity College, Oxford . 123 

VL THE INFLUENCE OF THE EEF- 

OEMATION ON IDEAS CONCEENING 

WEALTH AND PEOPEETY 

By H. G. Wood, M.A., Late Fellow of Jesus College, 
Carabridge; Lecturer at WoodbrooJce Settlement, 
Birmingham 141 

VIL PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 

By the Rev. Henry Scott Holland, D.D., Begius 
Professor of Divinity, Oxford, and Canon of Christ 
Church . . . . . . . . .179 

VIIL SOME ASPECTS OF THE LAW 
OF PEOPEETY IN ENGLAND 

By W. M. Geldart, M.A., B.CL., Vinerian Professor 
of English Law, and Fellow of All Souls College, 
Oxford 205 

INDEX . *. 237 



INTRODUCTION 

By the Bishop of Oxford 

I THINK that I shall best justify my appearance as 
introducing this volume of Essays if I explain the 
circumstances of their origin. Dr. Bartlet, of Mans- 
field College, Oxford, had written a letter to the 
British WeeMy strongly urging upon Christians the 
duty of reconsidering their ideas about property in the 
light of the Bible doctrine of stewardship — the doc- 
trine that Grod the Creator is the only absolute owner of 
all things or persons—that **all things come of Him" 
and are ^^His own," and that we men hold what we hold 
as stewards for the purposes of His Kingdom, with only 
a relative and dependent ownership limited at every 
point by the purpose for which it was entrusted to us. 
He was good enough to send me his letter and to sug- 
gest that we might combine to issue some literature 
of a popular kind about the duties and rights of prop- 
erty based on this Biblical doctrine. 

Naturally I felt a cordial sympathy with the idea, but 
I said that before anything of a popular kind was is- 
sued, I thought that we needed some more thorough or 
philosophical treatment of property in idea and his- 
tory. The Bible doctrine by itself makes an appeal of 
tremendous force to the individual conscience. But the 
individual, however deeply stirred in his conscience, ^^ 
however fully convinced that he must not conform him- 
self to the ideas of property which happen to be cur- 

xi 



xii PEOPEETY 

rent in society but mnst assert the Christian principle, 
finds himself in fact in the bonds of an organized sys- 
tem of property. By himself he can do very little. As 
a consumer, as a shareholder, as a tradesman, as an 
owner of land, as a shop assistant, as a clerk, as a work- 
man, he finds himself paralysed by the system of which 
inevitably he forms a part. The system is not unalter- 
able. It has altered profoundly in more directions than 
one within recent history, and is altering. But at every 
stage it holds the individual in its grasp. Not even by 
*' going out of the world,'' not even were he to do so 
strange a thing as to become a monk, can he get out of 
it. The clothes he wears, the food he eats, the railways 
he travels by, the books he buys, the State he belongs to, 
hold him in the grip of the system. What he cries out 
for, when his conscience is awakened, is not merely 
personal guidance, but also ideas which can be applied 
to society; not merely again schemes for law-making, 
but ideas such as must lie behind law-making and 
without which law-making is in vain. He wants an 
ideal of property, a principle of property, such as will 
tend to form a corporate conscience, at first among those 
who are consciously dissatisfied with things as they are 
and consciously in want of a theory, and then more 
widely in society as a whole. 

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Haldane, has just^ been 
speaking noble and suggestive words to the lawyers of 
the American Bar Association on the power of a com- 
mon mind, or common feeling as to what is legitimate 
and illegitimate, when it has become instinctive and 
dominant in a society. But this common mind about 
property is conspicuously lacking amongst us. We are 
groping in the dark. We are familiar with the tradi- 
tional cry of *Hhe rights of property," and we are pain- 

1 September 1, 1913. 



INTEODUCTION xiii 

fully familiar also with the disastrous wrongs which the 
law and custom of property as it exists among us has 
inflicted and is inflicting. But we want a theory, a 
principle to guide us. We cannot act with any power as ^ 
mere individuals without a corporate mind and con- 
science on the subject; and we can form no corporate 
mind and conscience without a clear principle. It was 
this principle, tiiis philosophy of property, in which, 
when I listened to Dr. Bartlet's appeal, I felt myself 
lacking. Without it I cannot play my part effectively 
as a citizen and still less as a moral teacher. Any 
moral teaching which is to grip men's minds requires 
it as a background. Therefore, before engaging in a 
popular propaganda, I needed to clear up the principle 
of property. 

So I felt : so I knew others were feeling. And, Dr. 
Bartlet agreeing, we set to work to get written a volume 
of essays on property in which the subject should be 
treated both from the standpoint of philosophy and of 
religion. Divisions of the subjects were easily sug- 
gested, and names of willing writers were finally forth- 
coming; and the present volume is the result of our 
efforts. Mr. Leonard Hobhouse begins with a state- 
ment of the early history of property and its later 
developments. Dr. Rashdall and Mr. Lindsay deal with 
the principle of property from the side of philosophy, 
historically and critically. Dr. Bartlet, Dr. Carlyle, 
and Mr. Wood give us the history of the treatment of 
property in Christendom from the side of religion. Dr. 
Holland concludes with an essay on the aspect of the 
.natter which the previous essays have shown to be of 
the first importance — ^the relation of property to per- 
sonality. Some differences, of emphasis at least, will 
be felt between different writers, but not such as to in- 
terfere with a marked unity of tendency and result. 



xiv PEOPERTY 

After reading these essays, I ask myself, How far have 
I and those who share my need for guidance towards a 
working principle of property got what we sought? I 
answer the question for myself by saying that the 
writers give me the impression of having got to the root 
of the matter ; they write with thorough and adequate 
knowledge and genuine impartiality; and as a result 
they help me most effectively to a standing-ground on 
certain dominant ideas or constructive principles by 
which I can guide myself and feel assurance in seeking 
to guide others, ideas and principles such as ought to 
have power to form a corporate conscience or common 
mind about property in the men of to-day — to act both 
as a secure basis of policy in promoting reform and 
as a ground of appeal to the Christian conscience. 

Mr. Hobhouse shows the way in his distinction be- 
tween property *^for use" and property **for power.'' 
This is a most fruitful distinction. Aristotle was the 
first to make the familiar appeal on behalf of private 
property that it is necessary for the free development 
of the higher life in the individual, and is the most 
effective stimulus to character and personal exertion. 
We are all familiar with the argument, and we feel its 
force to the full. The average man wants the sphere 
which he can call **his own" to stimulate him to develop 
himself, to get room to move freely and realize what he 
is capable of. Now Aristotle is able calmly to contem- 
plate this self-realization as the privilege of the few — 
the freemen or citizens — ^while the larger mass of the 
inhabitants of his city are to be slaves, men conceived 
to exist not for themselves but for their masters. To 
us this distinction is intolerable. We are bound to be- 
lieve that, whatever inequalities must subsist among 
men, every man has the divine and equal right to realize 
himself. The success of a civilization for us must be 



INTEODUCTION xv 

measured not by the amount and character of its prod- 
ucts or material wealth, nor by the degree of well-being 
which it renders possible for a privileged class, but by 
the degree in which it enables all its members to feel ^ 
that they have the chance of making the best of them- 
selves, to feel that an adequate measure of free self- 
realization is granted them. On this ground then our 
civilization is open to the most serious indictment. 
Property **for use'' — what a man needs for true free- 
dom, what even at the utmost he is able to use — is a very 
limited quantity on the whole. Very speedily, as it ex- 
pands, it becomes ^^ property for power": it becomes 
at last the almost unmeasured control by the few rich, 
not of any amount of unconscious material, but of other ^ 
men whose opportunity to live and work and eat be- 
comes subject to their will. That is where property 
has so manifestly gone wrong. In our own civilization 
we find vast masses of men and women who cannot be 
reasonably described as having any adequate measure 
of property for use. They cannot go out into life with 
the security of free men. They cannot, within reason- 
able limits, control their own destiny. They cannot 
realize themselves. They are ** hands" for other men 
to use. The conviction rises in our mind as we con- 
template the facts that something has gone very wrong 
with our tenure of property : that we need by peaceful ^ 
means, and, if it may be, by general consent, to accom- 
plish such a redistribution of property as shall reduce 
the inordinate amount of *^ property for power" in the 
hands of the few and give to all men, as far as may be, 
in reasonable measure ^^ property for use." Then we 
ask ourselves. Are we in entertaining such an ambition 
violating any sacred right of property? We interrogate 
the philosophers, and we find under Dr. Eashdall's 
guidance that we can discern no absolute right of prop- 



xvi PEOPEETY 

erty. "Ifs justification must depend upon no a prion 

\ principle but upon its social effects." We may say that 

a man has a divine right to realize his being : and this 

involves a certain right of property. But this goes but 

a very little way. Moreover, from the first man is a 

social animal. He realizes himself in connnunities. 

Property is made possible and seciired^by the commu 

nity, which becomes in developed society the State.' The 

State exists to enable its members to develop a worthy 

, human life. A State must be judged, and should judge 

itself, by its tendency to generate in all its citizens s 

worthy type of life — to make them happy and progres 

sive beings who feel that life is worth living. If at an^ 

stage it finds that the institution of property, as i1 

exists, is fostering luxury and exaggerated power in i 

few, and enslaving or hindermg the many, there h 

nothing to prevent it rectifying what is amiss. Prop 

^ erty is relative to character : it is a means towards i 

good life, and a good life for all men. The State is 

free to alter its laws or its methods so as to secure it; 

better distribution. As it is only the State whicl 

enables a man to become rich, so, if wealth prove; 

inimical to the general development, the possessors o 

wealth have no legitimate claim to urge against th^ 

State taking measures to redress the balance, provide( 

that the end which the State has in view is the true enc 

— the real welfare of all its citizens. No doubt, as Mi 

Lindsay shows, it is a difficult process to guard thi 

sacred right of personal freedom against State tyranni 

on the one hand, and on the other to prevent the exces 

of individualism which means in practice the enslave 

ment of the many to the few. But because it is difficul 

to direct human life aright individually or socially, w 

must not, therefore, abandon what alone makes huma: 

life worth living — the effort to realize a worthy idea"| 



INTEODUCTION xvii 

And what has religion — the Christian religion which 
exists to teach men that the end of their being is to 
serve the glory of God and the real good equally of 
themselves and of their fellows — to say to the institu- 
tion of property! The Old Testament, on which Chris- 
tianity is based, describes the theocratic community; 
and its moral principles have, as the Christian is taught 
to believe, a permanent validity — to be developed and 
not to be superseded. Well then, a man cannot read the 
law and the prophets from the point of view of one who 
would think rightly about private property, without 
seeing how, alike in the institutions of the law and in the 
teaching of the prophets, the intention is to recognize 
it, indeed, as having God's sanction, but to restrain it 
by a peremptory insistence on the right of God, the 
only absolute owner, and the rights of our fellow men, 
especially the weaker and poorer members of the State. 
Much that we are accustomed to hear called legitimate 
insistence upon the rights of property, the Old Testa- 
ment would seem to call the robbery of God, and the 
grinding of the faces of the poor. 

Later the teaching of Jesus Christ about the worth 
of each individual, the poorest /and the weakest, ex- 
pressed itself in the Christian idisa of brotherhood, and 
the institution of the Church as a body in which ''ii 
I one member suffer, all the members suffer with if 
' This idea and institution carried with it a doctrine of 
1 property, which echoed our Lord's strong disparage- 
jment of wealth, and was in theory and practice highly 
^communal. The Christians were a persecuted body, 
who had no power of controlling the law or practice of 
[the society of the Empire ; but within their own **volun- 
^tary'' society the claim of the brethren was paramount. 
:The scoffer, Lucian, notes this as their characteristic: 
'** Their leader, whom they yet adore, had persuaded 



xviii PEOPERTY 

them that they were all brethren : in compliance with his 
laws they looked with contempt on all worldly treasures 
and held everything in common," or (as this is morei 
accurately expressed), '*It is incredible with what alac- 
rity those people defend and support their conunon 
interests — the interest of any of their number — and! 
spare nothing, in short, to promote it." Thus thei 
Christian church became a corporation for mutual sup- 
port, refusing the idler who would not work, but for the 
rest accepting the maxim that they ''must provide one! 
another with support, with all joy : furnishing those who: 
lack occupation with employment, and thus with the 
necessary livelihood. To the workman, work; to him 
who cannot work, mercy (or alms)."^ There is no 
doubt that this profound sense of the communal claim 
on private property and this practically effective sense 
of brotherhood produced an economic condition in thej 
Christian community which was one main cause of its; 
progress. The Fathers use the strongest languagej 
against any ''right of property," which resists the 
claim of the needs of the brethren. Dr. Bartlet writes 
with a studied moderation about all this, and shows no 
little insight in accounting for the disappointing fact 
that when Christianity became the established religion, 
it did so little to impress its ideal of property upon the! 
law and custom of the later Empire. But certainly 
the church bore the strongest witness to the idea of 
property as a trust for the common good. And in no 
way is this more strikingly shown than in its identifican 
tion of "charity" — that is, charity in the narrower 
sense of almsgiving — ^with justice.^ The needy can 
claim our alms as a matter of justice : to retain morei 

2 Pseudo-Clement, Ep. 8; see Harnack, Expansion of Christianity 
(Williams & Norgate), i. p. 218. i 

3 This is especially but not exclusively characteristic of the Weaternsi 
—Cyprian, Lactantius, Ambrose, etc. 



INTEODUCTION xix 

property than we strictly need is a violation of justice, 
and not merely a failure to perform a work of superero- 
gation. Lord Hugh Cecil has recently drawn a strong 
distinction between charity and justice. He says ** orig- 
inally the relief of the poor was based on the duty 
of Christian charity, and not on any supposed right of 
justice,''* As far as Early Christianity is concerned 
the distinction here drawn would be repudiated. To 
withhold charity is to refuse justice. And when we 
pass from the Early Christian period to the Middle 
AgeSp when the whole fabric of society was in Christian 
hands we find the old principle asserted. Charity in 
the form of tithe, and more generally distribution of 
wealth to need, is still asserted to be justice and the 
withholding of it injustice. *^No man has really the 
right to hold for himself more than he needs." And 
the Stoic principle of a law of nature behind and con- 
trolling the law of the State, is adopted in dealing with 
property. Private property, and laws maintaining the 
rights of private property, are necessary as a protec- 
tion against the lawlessness of fallen human nature; 
but behind the laws is the original principle by which all 
things are common, which gives to every man his right 
to what he needs, so that even stealing, St. Thomas 
maintains, is no stealing if the need is sufficiently ur- 
gent, and property has no claim which is valid against 
the natural or fundamental right of every man to enjoy 
the bounty of the Creator. It ought to be added that in 
mediaeval society a very large share of property was 
held by the religious houses, who at their best main- 
tained in practical action the principle of voluntary 
poverty, and at their lower level exhibited on the larg- 
est scale the principle of communal ownership within 
their own membership and for the sake of the poor. 

^ Cofisei'vatism (Williams & Norgate), p. 172. 



XX PEOPEETY 

Amongst the Eeformers there were some who main- 
tained the old Christian instinct unimpaired. No nobler 
practical insistence on the trne conception of property 
can be found than is to be found in the sermons of Hugh 
Latimer; but, on the whole, the candid reader of Mr. 
Wood's most interesting essay, with its valuable catena 
of quotations, will feel that Protestantism in general, 
and not least our English Protestantism, embodied an 
excessive individualism,^ as in other respects so also 
in regard to property. It abandoned much of the con- 
tent which the Bible or earlier Christianity had given 
to the commandment, ^^Thou shalt not steal.'' It 
ushers in the epoch in which the doctrine of the right 
of property is largely stripped of its old limitations.® 

What are we to say, then, about the still dominant 
individualism, the assertion of an almost unlimited 
right of acquiring, retaining, and perpetuating prop- 
erty, which breaks out against either any strongly 
urged moral claim for voluntarily giving better condi- 
tions to the poorer workers as an act of justice, or 

5 It may be the case that the greater individualism in the conception 
of property which characterizes Protestant literature would be found 
to be more or less characteristic of the thought of Europe generally, 
whether Protestant or Catholic, in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies, and to be due, not only to Protestant tendencies, but to a 
widespread change in the economic structure of society. 

6 But out of the heart of the eighteenth century we do well to recall 
that Bishop Butler, in defending the right of the lay holder of what 
had formerly been Church property to retain his property with a good 
conscience, does so on grounds which involve the principle that there 
is no absolute or perpetual right of property. "Property in general is, 
and must be, regulated by the laws of the community. . . . Every 
donation to the Christian church is a human donation and no more; 
and therefore cannot give a divine right, but such a right only as must 
be subject in common with all other property to human laws. . . . The 
persons who gave these lands to the church had themselves no right 
in perpetuity in them, consequently could convey no such right to the 
church. But all scruples concerning the lawfulness of laymen possess- 
ing these lands go upon the supposition that the church had such a 
right in perpetuity in them; and therefore all those scruples must be 
groundless as going upon a false supposition." See a letter of Bishop 
Bmtler's in Fitzgerald's edition of the Analogy, Preface, p. xciii. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

against any action of the State wMcIl tends in the direc- 
tion of a more equitable distribution of the proceeds of 
industry? 

We are bound to say that, looking at the matter 
philosophically, it has no validity. The particular 
laws which at any moment regulate the holding of 
property, or determine the burden which it is to bear 
for the public good^ are laws of the State ; it is the State 
which alone enables property to be gathered and held ; 
and there is no legitimate claim which property can 
make against what appears to be the welfare of the 
State. It is hardly possible to state the principle too 
strongly. We are only saying the same thing in other 
words if we say that the tenure of property in any com- 
munity must be judged by its tendency to promote what 
alone is the real end of civil society — that is, the best 
possible life for man in general and all men in par- 
ticular. If it appears that the conditions of property- 
holding at any particular period sacrifice the many to 
the few, and tend to starve the vitality or destroy the 
hope or depress the efforts of masses of men and 
women, there is no legitimate claim that property can 
make against the alteration of conditions by gradual 
and peaceable means. 

Can such a charge be made out against the present 
conditions under which in our country property is 
acquired and held or handed on ? I fear that it can be 
made out and pressed home. 

The stimulus of unlimited acquisition, it is sometimes 
pleaded, is necessary to bring out of men their great- 
est capacity and energy. If you restrain a man's free- 
dom to acquire, you damp his energy. But what about 
the energy of the masses of men who can acquire no 
property or no sufficient property to give them secure 
status and hope ? If you go some way towards equaliz- 



xxii PEOPERTY 

ing opportunity, as between one man and another, will 
you not stimulate a thousand energies and interests to 
one which you may cheek? 

The most formidable form of this plea is that which 
represents to us that in modern industry the most im- 
portant factor is the brain of the great organizer ; that 
this will only work under the stimulus of unlimited 
acquisition of wealth and personal power; and that if 
in our own country this power of unlimited acquisition 
is restricted, the men of greatest initiative will go to 
countries where no such restrictions exist, and our own 
industrial life will suffer. This is a terrible argument 
— the argument that what is most powerful in men 
cannot be induced to act in the public interest but 
only on the motive of unrestricted selfishness. There 
are many experiences in modern industrial life to be 
set against it. It may, however, be a motive for pro- 
ceeding gradually in reforming industrial conditions, 
and a ground for strengthening international fellowship 
among reformers, so that similar tendencies may be 
apparent in all countries. But it can never be a ground 
for tying the hands of justice ; and it leaves altogether 
out of account the stimulus to industry which is to be 
anticipated in any country in which more and more men 
in the industrial world can feel that it is worth while 
to do their best. 

Property in some sense is necessary for personality. 
That is certainly true. Let us therefore be careful to 
guard against any invasion of the real liberty of per- 
sons, let us maintain the right of property **for use.'' 
But how overwhelming is the indictment against pres- 
ent conditions in their bearing on personality, the per- 
sonality of the mass of our countrymen. On this line 
Dr. Holland brings the series of essays to a conclusion 
with an argument which seems to me to be of over- 



INTEODUCTION xxiii 

whelming force. And he calls attention to the root 
fact abont personality that it is in its fundamental v- 
being a social thing — a relation of one individnal to 
another ; and that a legitimate development of person- 
ality involves a legitimate development of fellowship. 
The Eoman poet contrasts the extravagance of indi- 
vidual wealth in his own time with what he discerns 
to have been the ancient Eoman ideal : 

Privatus illis census erat brevis, 
Commune magnumJ 

Their private property was small: what was in common, *" 
that was large. 

These words echo in our mind. We cannot get rid 
of the feeling that individualism in property has over- ^ 
done itself : that it is working disastrous havoc : that the 
cry for justice from masses of men and women is a cry 
which is legitimate ; and if it is a legitimate cry, then 
most certainly it behoves us not to wait till its claim 
can be enforced, grudging every inch that is yielded un- 
willingly to '^labour" imder the pressure of compul- 
sion, but rather as free men to face the facts and gird 
ourselves willingly for reform, even if it entail for us 
personal sacrifice. 

And here comes in the claim of our religion. We 
have been unfaithful to its ancient instincts and to the 
spirit of our Master. Speaking of the sixteenth and 
again of the nineteenth century, and referring, I think, 
to Europe at large, Harnock says: ''The church was 
generally on the wrong side, a fact which still rankles / 
in the memory of the nation, and is not without influence 
on the economic struggle of the present day."® The 
modern church has generally been on the wrong side. 

7 Horace, Carm. ii. 15. 

^The Social Gospel (Williams & Norgate), p. 63. 



xxiv INTEODUCTION 

Can we deny it? Can we deny that its conception of 
property and of the obligations of property, and its 
attitude towards the real needs of the masses of men 
who have held no property, or received no adequate 
supply of what life needs for its development, have 
been wholly different from what the teaching of the 
prophets and our Lord, and our Fathers in Christen- 
dom, would have had them to be ? In this respect, as in 
others, our religion to-day is on its trial. The place it is 
to hold in the minds of men in general and the genuine- 
ness which can be ascribed to our profession of brother- 
hood, depend on our courageous readiness to think 
again what our Christian principles mean. What do 
we honestly believe in God's will — Christ's will — for 
men? What do we mean when we say that we hold 
our property as stewards for God's purposes? Do we 
really believe that covetousness and the desire to ac- 
cumulate wealth — ^yes, and wealth itself— deserve all 
that our Lord and His apostles said of them? Do we 
really acknowledge that if we are failing to redeem our 
brothers and sisters from misery and want, we are 
failing to redeem Christ? And if we genuinely mean 
what we should mean, and believe what we say, are we, 
as Christians, ready for a deep and courageous and 
corporate act of penitence and reparation? 



THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 
OF PEOPERTY, IN FACT AND IN IDEA 

BY 

L. T. HOBHOUSB, MA. 

PSOFESSOB OF SOCIOLOGY, LONDON UNIVERSITY 



SUMMARY 

1. The general notion of property. It is a right of control over 
things which society recognizes. It may be absolute or partial, held 
by one person or many, or by a community, but it must be exclusive 
as against others, and it must have some permanence. 

2. The connection of property with rational purpose, and with free- 
dom. 

3. The opposition, in this regard, between property held for use by 
its owner, and property as a means of controlling the labour of others. 

4. Property is a recognized institution in all known societies; but in 
the simpler societies it is rarely, if ever, a source of "power." This side 
develops with the advance of material civilization, and culminates in 
the modern inequalities of wealth. 

6. Of theories of property we may distinguish (a) the Communistic, 
which really attacks the whole principle of property; (6) the Labour 
theory; (c) the Individualistic theory, which finds it essential to char« 
acter; and (d) the Socialistic theory. Need of discrimination between 
property for "use" and for "power," and of the extension of certain 
forms of State ownership in the interest of personal rights. 



THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 
OF PEOPERTY, IN FACT AND IN IDEA ^ 

A satisfactory account of the development of property 
in general has not yet been written, and perhaps in the 
present state of our knowledge cannot be written. In 
no department of the study of comparative institutions 
are the data more elusive and unsatisfactory. The di- 
vergence between legal theory and economic fact, be- 
tween written law and popular custom, between implied 
rights and actual enjoyment, enables one and the same 
institution to be painted and, within limits, quite honest- 
ly and faithfully painted in very different colours. The 
legally minded historian will lay stress on forms or 
principles which have very little bearing on the actual 
life of the people. The economic historian, impatient 
,of these subtleties, will ask us to look at the actual work- 
ing of the institution, only to find that by some turn of 
events the dormant legal principle is awakened, and 
becomes a potent and perhaps deadly force in the work- 
ing of a system. The theorist with a generalization to 
defend can always, by judicious selection and omission, 
, quote travellers, ethnologists, early codes, or points of 
contemporary custom on his side ; for he is singularly 
unfortunate if he cannot find something either in the 
every day working of the institution or in its theoretical 

1 In this paper the social functions of property are examined by the 
standard of purely humanitarian ethics. 



4 PEOPEETY 

implications, whicli, by ignoring other aspects, may be! 
made to tell on his side. But any one who considersjt 
the extraordinary difficulty which our own social his-|l 
torians find in presenting a perfectly just picture of!" 
landed property in England in any one century, to sayF 
nothing of its development through the centuries, willf] 
realize the kind of caution which science will demand |f 
in reconstructing the true character of property amongji 
a simple people who have no written documents from| 
the statements of travellers, even if they are skilled ob-| 
servers. |' 

A single illustration may suffice. In a simple com-jj 
munity practising extensive agriculture a man tellsl 
a traveller that this is '*his" land, and that his neigh- 
bour 's land. The statement is duly printed, and in the 
end finds its way into a volume on the development of: 
property as evidence of the individual ownership o| 
land, without so much as a note to show the readerl 
whether there has been any enquiry into the conditions; 
of tenure. Another observer may state with equal truth 
that the land ** belongs" to the tribe, and this remark 
figures in a work of different tendency as equally good 
evidence in favour of primitive communism, though' 
there may be nothing to show in what form the land is] 
actually used by the members of the tribe. In some ofl 
the Australian tribes good observers tell us that there: 
is no such thing as private property in land.^ Among: 
others, other writers assure us that land neither be- 
longs to a tribe nor to a group of families but to a single: 
male.^ Does the difference really lie between the tribes' 
or between the observers ? Some light may be throwU) 
on the question and on the general difficulties of method! 

2 Spencer and Gillen, The 'Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 
27, etc. 

^E.g. Grey and Eyre, cited in Hildebrand's Recht und Sitte auf den' 
verschiedenen Kulturstufen, p. 4. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY 5 

3y a passage in Mr. Howitt's classical work.* Among 
he coast tribes of New South Wales it appears that the 
[and wherein a child is born is ^^his" to hnnt in, and 
3ven a father or mother may thns ^ * acquire ' ' land when 
I child is born to them outside their own locality. ^*The 
place where a man is born," said an old man, **is his 
3wn locality and he has always the right to hunt over 
it, and all others born there have also the right to do 
30. ' ' It may safely be said that this is one of the very 
last forms of title that would occur to a civilized en- 
:][uirer. The effect of his examination of any single 
iaative would be to persuade him that that native owned 
the land where he was born. It would only be if he 
happened to examine several born in the same district 
that he would discover that many men called the same 
land their own, and that their property in it could 
neither be described as communal nor as individual. 

Where data are so difficult to ascertain, generaliza- 
tion must be unusually precarious. At best it may be 
possible here to set out a few salient points which may 
serve to throw light on the very diverse functions of 
property in the social system, the variations which the 
conception of property has undergone, and the manner 
in which these are connected with the general develop- 
ment of society. With this object we will briefly con- 
sider (1) the general notion of property, (2) the psy- 
chological conditions on which it rests, (3) certain as- 
pects of its social functions, (4) some of the forms 
which property has assumed at several stages of social 
development, and (5) the light thro^m by these con- 
siderations on certain typical theories of property 
which will be briefly reviewed. 

4 The Native Tribes of South East Aiistralia, p. 83. 



PROPEETY 

I 

ji 

I. The Notion of Property ri 

For purposes of social theory property is to be coni 
ceived in terms of the control of man over things. Maril' 
needs food to eat, implements to procure it, land to wortii 
upon, and for that matter to stand and move upon. That' 
he may supply his needs at all, he must at least tem-i 
porarily control the implement that he is using, and the; 
spot on which he is working. But that this temporaryl 
control or possession may become property, certain| 
further conditions are essential. His possession nmsti 

^' in the first place be recognized by others, i.e., it musti 
be of the nature of a right. In the second place, with, 
regard to things of a permanent nature, his right nrnsti 
also have a certain permanence. He must be able to'| 
count on the use of the thing. His right over it, though^ 
it may limited in time, must not be confined to the 
moment when he has it in his hands, but must be re- 
spected in his absence. Thirdly, his control must be, 
exclusive. If he shares the control of the thing with; 
others, then it is not his private property. But if hej 
and his partners control it to the exclusion of the rest 
of the world, then it is their joint or their common prop- 
erty. If on the other hand all the world alike can use it, ; 
then it is not property at all. Property may be private, j 
joint, or common, but it must vest in some person ori 
persons, and it must be exclusive of other persons. 

Exclusive control, however, it must be borne in mind, 
does not necessarily mean complete control. A may 

"^ control a thing for one purpose to the exclusion of all 
the world, B among the rest; yet B may control that 
same thing for another purpose to the exclusion of all 
the world, A among the rest. When I take a room in an 
inn for the night, it is **mine" for the night to the ex- 
clusion of any one else. But th^ landlord has perma- 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEKTY 7 

nent rights in the room which are exclusive as against 
me. It may be objected that we ought to say that the 
landlord has the property, while he gives me only the 
right of using it. This may seem to accord better 
with usage, but in the final analysis of property it seems 
desirable for several reasons to insist that all forms of 
control are species of one genus. The control over a 
thing may be complete or partial, and the partial con- 
trol may ascend by so many gradations till it becomes 
complete, that it is difficult to know where to draw a 
line. The main distinction of principle seems to be that 
between control of a thing for use and enjoyment, and 
control for the purpose of disposal, sale, exchange, or 
bequest. The latter kind of control may indeed be re- 
garded as essential to property in the sense of owner- 
ship, but to restrict property to this sense would be to 
leave the manner of its use and enjoyment out of 
account. A man may only be life-tenant of a landed* 
estate, its disposal after his death being determined by 
law or the decision of the community, or a previous 
owner's will. Yet while he lives the man may have 
complete control of its management, and from genera- 
tion to generation the same conditions may recur. To 
leave the life interest out of account would then be to 
divorce the conception of property from the main con- 
ditions of practical control. 

It will be seen then that property lis a principle which 
admits of variation in several distinct directions. It is 
a control which may be more or less fully recognized 
and guaranteed by society. It may be more or less 
permanent, more or less dependent on present use and 
possession or enjoyment. It may be concentrated in 
one hand, or common to many. It may extend to more, 
or to fewer, of the purposes to which a thing may be 
put. But that the control may be property at all, it 



8 PEOPERTY 

must in some sort be recognized, in some sort indepen- 
dent of immediate physical enjoyment, and at some 
point exclusive of control by other persons. "Within 
these limits there is room for indefinite variation in 
many directions, and the variations are not necessarily 
dependent on one another. 

2. The Psychology of Property j 

1 
These elementary considerations help ns in deter- j 

mining the psychological basis of property, as to which j 
a mere note must here suffice. Some writers speak of I 
an instinct of property. But this is to simplify over- 1 
much. No doubt the higher animals have a rudimentary 
property. The bone which your dog has once seized is 
*'his'' bone. He resents the attempt to take it from 
him with an excitement which does not show in respect 
to a bone which he has not yet taken. My tame jack- 
daw steals my pencil and makes off hurriedly with it 
with all the flutter of conscious theft, or he will play a ' 
game with it, dropping it provocatively and picking, 
it up smartly, or going straight at my fingers — the 
wretch! — ^when I attempt to recapture it. What hap- 
pens in these cases seems to be that the interest which 
a class of objects excites — either through their use for 
food or, in the exceptional case of the jackdaw, through 
their inherent attractiveness as nice, bright, peckable 
things, easily portable in one's bill — ^is focussed by the 
first act of seizure or even of attention on a particular 
object, and that thereupon all the train of feelings or 
reactions attendant on, or subsidiary to, its use are 
, called forth in response to that object rather than 
others. This constitutes the mental appropriation of an ,> 
object; and not only for man, but for the dog with its 
buried bone, and the bird with its nest, and the jack- 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 9 

daw with its ** cache," the appropriated object becomes 
a permanent basis of action, something that it can count 
upon and go back to at need. For man, at all events, his 
property is above all something that he can rely upon as 
a permanent home, permanent means of subsistence or 
enjoyment. Property is thus an integral element in an 
ordered life of purposeful activity. It is, at bottom for 
the same reason, an integral element in a free life. This 
distinguishes property from mere adequate provision 
with the material goods. A man who has his meals set 
down before him all nicely prepared and measured out 
by expert authority may be well nourished ; but as he 
has no property beyond his actual plateful, so he has 
no freedom but to take it or give it to the cat. The man 
who has a shilling in his pocket is free to eat or drink 
what he likes up to the limit of the shilling. He may 
not get so good or sustaining a meal, but he gets his 
own choice. The man who has a w^eekly wage is, other 
things being equal, more free than a man paid by truck, 
and a man who works on his own land with his own 
implements is more free, other things being equal, than 
the wage-earner. At each point the more a man can 
count on his own exertions applied to his own property, 
the more he can direct his own activity on the lines 
which suit his taste. Some measure of property ap- 
pears, in short, to be the essential basis of liberty ; and 
conversely the sense of freedom in enjoyment ranks 
along with the sense of security and permanence among 
the complex constituents of the pride and joy of owner- 
ship. 

3. Social Aspects of Pkoperty : Use and Power 

Unfortunately what is liberty for one man is often 
the negation of liberty for another. In a developed 



10 PEOPERTY 

society a man's property is not merely something wMchl 
he controls and enjoys, which he can make the basis of] 
his labour and the scene of his ordered activities, but' 
something whereby he can control another man and 
make it the basis of that man's labour and the scene of 
activities ordered by himself. The abstract right of 
property is apt to ignore these trifling distinctions ; and 
theories of property are founded, for example, on the; 
right of the labourer to .his produce, which completely^ 
ignore the fact that as industry develops, the most con- 
spicuous function of property is to secure a part ofl 
one man's labour-product for the benefit of another. 
Both the history and the philosophy of property turn 
on these two relations of the institution to social life as 
a whole. On the one hand property is the material 
\ basis of a permanent, ordered, purposeful, and self- 
directed activity. Such upon the whole is the property 
which a man directly uses or enjoys by himself or in 
association with his nearest and dearest. On the other 
hand property is a form of social organization, whereby 
the labour of those who have it not is directed by and! 
for the enjoyment of those that have. In this sense 
the control of the owmer is essentially a control of la- 
bour. It is that *^ alchemy" whereby the ** Seigneur 
lounging in the CEil de Bceuf " extracts the third nettle 
from the gatherer in the fields and calls it rent. It does 
not essentially consist in the handling and use of the 
material thing. It is consistent with as little knowledge 
of the thing as the average shareholder of an Argen- 
tine railway possesses of the whereabouts of **his" 
track, who knows that the dividends come in with fair 
regularity every six months, though he might have 
difficulty in locating the terminus of the line within' 
500 miles. 
Now these two functions of property, the control of 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 11 

things, which gives freedom and security, and the con- 
trol of persons through things, which gives power to 
the owner, are very different. In some respects they 
are radically opposed, yet from the nature of the case 
they are intertwined, and their relationship can be 
traced through the history of the institution, some 
phases of which may now be indicated. 

4. Phases of the Development of Pkoperty 

In the general sense here given property is found 
in every known society. A man's clothing, weapons, 
and tools, a woman's ornaments, the family hut or 
cave, or at least a marked portion thereof,^ are from 
the first recognized as belonging to the man, the woman, 
or the family. The inventory of a Vedda's very 
simple personal estate is given by Dr. and Mrs. 
Seligmann: 

One axe, bow and arrows, three pots, a deer skin, a flint 
and steel, and supply of tinder, a gourd for carrying water, a 
betel pouch containing betel covers, and some form of box for 
holding lime, also a certain amount of cloth besides that on 
the person. 

To these personal belongings a man has a right in 
the sense in which rights are recognized by simple 
societies. Theft would at lowest be resented by the 
individual, and there would be a customary form of 
reparation which he would exact. As soon as any sort 
of public court is formed it will deal with this right 
and the wrongs arising out of it, on the same general 

5 E.g. In the "Long House" of the Iroquois and other North American 
Indians. Dargun, "Ursprung und Greschichte des Eigentums" {Z. f. 
vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. v, p. 37), insists on this point. 
The Vedda families, according to Dr. Seligmann, have their proper place 
in the joint caves. 



12 PEOPERTY 

principles and by the same methods as with others.® 
To discuss these questions further would be to examine 
the social basis of rights in general, which is foreign to 
our purpose. Property is from the first, to all appear- 
ances, a right recognized much in the same fashion as 
rights of the person or marital rights are recognized, 
and on this side the development follows the same 
general lines in all cases. The important point for us 
to consider is what sort of things are objects of prop- 
erty, and whose property they are ; or in more ultimate 
analysis. What sort of exclusive control is exerted over 
things, and by whom! 

Now among the simplest known tribes, who live by 
gathering fruits, digging roots, and hunting, the pos- 
sible objects of property may be divided into two 
categories. On the one hand there are the trivial per- 
sonal belongings that have been mentioned. On the 
other hand there is the land, uncleared and unculti- 
vated, but the one great means of subsistence. Of the 
first kind there is private ownership ; but it will be ap- 
parent that the life of the little isociety will be deter- 
mined principally by liberty or restriction in the matter 
of hunting or collecting food, that is to say, by the 
ownership of the land. How then is land owned in 
these communities? Is it communal or is it personal? 
If we could answer this question clearly and unambigu- 
ously, we should get as near as the evidence is ever 
likely to bring us to a solution of the problem of prim- 
itive property, and in particular of the vexed questions 
surrounding the nature of the village community. Un- 

6 In nine cases out of ten the "thievishness" attributed by travellers 
to simple peoples is seen on careful reading to mean that they dis- 
regarded the proprietary rights of the whites. Could these peoples 
describe the morals of the whites, what might they say of the civilized 
man's regard for their property? It is true that in some cases belong- 
ings are taken without leave and without censure, but these are cer- 
tainly the exception. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY 13 

fortunately the evidence is not altogether clear and 
unambiguous. In some instances the communal tenure 
of the land is beyond doubt. The case of the Central 
Australians already quoted may serve as an instance. 
In the first place, among these people the tribe has its 
kno^\ii area, with boundaries recognized by the neigh- 
bouring tribes. Within the tribe there are divisions 
and subdivisions, the ultimate unit being a *' local 
group'' of a few families — in one tribe forty individ- 
uals constitute the largest existing group — who roam 
about an area which, like that of the tribe as a whole, 
is clearly defined. Within this area there is no indi- 
vidual property. It is free to all members of the group, 
but no one else may hunt in it without permission, and 
the boundaries are habitually observed. Moreover, 
ownership is associated with the centres within the 
area in which the souls of ancestors who lived in the 
Alcheringa— -the great long ago — are deposited, which 
souls are reincarnated in living members of the group. 
Within the terms of our definition it is clear that this 
area is the common property of the group. Writers 
who deny communal property altogether among the 
hunting peoples can only deal with a case like this by 
calling it not property but sovereignty. It is true that 
the group is substantially an autonomous unit, but the 
only deduction that can be drawn from this is that 
political control — if we may use such an expression 
here— -and the right of property are not at this stage 
differentiated. Indeed, in the case of land this differ- 
entiation is not completely effected till a relatively late 
stage in social development, and it may be doubted 
whether a complete differentiation is ever possible 
without socially disastrous consequences. In any case 
the effective control of the land is in the hands of 
the group. No single member has an exclusive right 



14 PEOPEETY 

against the group, while the group has an exclusive 
right against all others, and this right is recognized by 
the others. We cannot refuse to call this common 
ownership ; and if the same system obtained among all 
hunting people, the starting-point in the development 
of property in land would be perfectly clear. 

But this is not the case. The necessities of hunting 
and the collection of food may lead to further sub- 
division, and we find cases, both in Australia and else- 
where, where land is owned by an individual hunter 
and his family.^ We saw above that same ambiguity 
may attach to the evidence in these cases. Let us take 
an instance where the report is precise. The Veddas 
are organized in very small groups of families closely 
related to one another. Each group has its definite 
hunting area, but within it each man has his own 
land. This land passes by regular inheritance, or may 
be given to a son or a son-in-law. It may also be 
alienated. But whether it is given to the natural heir 
or to any one else it can only be with the assent of 
every adult male of the group.® In this instance it 
is clear that immediate ownership is private, and that 

7 In ten Australian tribes or groups common ownership is pretty 
clearly indicated, and in five family ownership. But several authors, 
e.g., Lang, Grey, Eyre, Curr, assert individual ownership. The evidence, 
however, is often conflicting and in some cases we can only suppose a 
kind of dual ownership. Thus J. Browne, writing in Dr. Petermann's 
Mitteilungen for 1856, describes four West Australian tribes which he 
knew well, as having land possessed by families and individuals; but 
he remarks that it is difficult to say in what private property consists, 
as the tribe roams the whole area without distinction, while if a 
stranger trespasses, it is resented and a fight ensues. Perhaps the only 
prerogative of the owner, he says, is to take the lead in this resistance. 
As to family property, it must be borne in mind that the Australian 
local group is often so small as to be little more than an enlarged 
family, so that family and group ownership pass into one another. 
It should also be noted that rules for the division of the spoils of the 
hunt are common in Australia. Of twenty cases of which I have infor- 
mation, the food is divided between the whole camp in ten; between 
the relations, including the wife's relations, in six; while in four the 
rules are not specified. s Seligmann, op. cit. pp. 107, 111. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PKOPERTY 15 

the eminent o^\mersliip is in the group. The control 
of the group secures the important point, that access to 
the land will be maintained for those who are by birth 
its members. As long as this principle is maintained 
land may be communal property, or it may be personal, 
or the two principles may be intermixed, but in any 
case it will be held for use and not for power. Its 
tenure will be occupational, and I think we may pro- 
visionally conclude that this is the general character- 
istic of primitive property in land, that is to say, of the 
one essential basis of production in the lowest stages of 
development.® 

This suggestion is confirmed when we consider the 
beginning of agriculture. Land at the outset is cleared 
for the raising of a crop. Its fertility is soon exhausted, 
perhaps after a single harvest, and the little commu- 
nity moves on to another spot. But the whole amount 
brought under cultivation at any one time is a very 
small fraction of the waste belonging to the commu- 
nity and hunted over by any of its members indiscrimi- 
nately. No difficulty is made about the right to clear 

9 Among fifty-five tribes of "hunters and gatherers." as to whose prop- 
erty system I have found some account, forty-four appear to hold 
land either as property of the tribe or of a smaller group — clan, village, 
or band — within the tribe. Of the remainder five are the Australian 
tribes in which ownership is attributed to the family, and there are 
left six cases of individual ownership, to which perhaps a few more 
Australian eases ought to be added. In two or three instances owner- 
ship is attributed to the chief, but this seems to be rather as the 
representative of the community than as true personal property. 

In a few cases special clans monopolized the land or the best part 
of it. Thus among the Thlinkeets, according to Swanton {Smithsonian 
Annual Reports, xxvi), certain clans had no land of their own, and 
either used the common land of the tribe or had to wait until the more 
fortunate clans had done with their land for the season. Among the 
Chilcotin, Carriers, and Western Shushwaps land was the property of 
the nobles. In the two former cases, according to Father Morice {Pro- 
ceedings of the Canadian Institute, 1893), the heads of non-noble 
families might hunt on the land with the chief's permission. In the 
latter, according to Teit {Report of the Jesup Expedition), the nobles 
charged rents on the commons, fined them for trespass, and drove them 



16 PEOPEETY 

a field, but whatever one man has cleared belongs, at 
least while he tills it, to himself and his family. At 
this stage private property can hardly be more than 
a possessory right, for when the last crop has been 
taken the clearing is really of less value than the waste. 
**Arva per annos mutant et superest ager." There 
is uncleared land in abundance. It belongs to the com- 
munity and is open to any one to break up.^** Thus 
there is temporary private possession and permanent 
common ownership. But on this point more than one 
possibility arises. Agriculture may become a collec- 
tive industry, fields being tilled and the harvest gath- 
ered by the common labour, as among the Karaya 
tribes," and a special store may be set apart for the 
necessitous, as among the Creeks. But more often, 
as tillage develops and becomes more intensive, the 
temporary occupation becomes permanent. The neces- 



oif to the more distant tribal grounds quite in the style of modern 
civilization. Among the Tsimshian, according to Boas, a clan retained 
the rights to its land even though it moved av^ay; but I do not know 
whether it could charge anything for its use by others. All these 
instances are from the relatively developed hunting and fishing tribes 
of the west coast of North America, where class distinctions had come 
into being. 

In the Torres Straits land may be held in individual ownership and 
is not infrequently lent or let for a share in the produce, e.g., a garden 
is lent on the understanding that the first-fruits go to the owner 
( Haddon, Cambridge Expedition, vol. iv. ) , One group of these islands 
is non-agricultural, and private property also obtains here, but whether 
the leasing system is also known is not clear to me. 

The figures given above are from an enquiry whick is not quite fin- 
ished and needs final revision, but are not likely to require any such 
modification as would invalidate the general rule that, with a few 
exceptions such as those mentioned, land in a community of hunters 
and gatherers is accessible to all members of a social group. This, it 
may be remarked, would hold even in the Australian cases where owner- 
ship is assigned to the individual. There is nowhere any hint of a 
landless class. 

10 Compare the remarks of Von Martins, Zur EtfmograpMe Amerikas, 
on Brazilian land tenure, which are sufficiently clear, notwithstanding 
the criticisms of Dargun {Entioicklimgs-Geschichte, pp. 51-54). 
11 Ehrenreich, Veroff. Konigl. Museums, Band 1. 



THE EVOLUTION OE PEOPERTY 17 

sity of letting the land lie fallow may be met by a 
two-field or three-field system, and the recurrent pos- 
session of the same plots hardens into permanent own- 
ership. The holding, however, may still be that of 
the family or of the kindred rather than that of the 
individual; and the kindred, living together in a Long 
Honse with stores in common, constitute a smaller and 
stricter communism within the community as a whole.^^ 
But whether through the break-up of the kindred or 
as the direct result of the growth of cultivation,^^ land 
may be recognized as the private property of the man 
who clears or tills it, and may be alienated, sold, or 
bequeathed/* Immediate ownership of the culltivated 
plots thus passes to the kindred, the family, or the indi- 
vidual. Still the community may retain certain emi- 
nent rights and certain powers of control : for example, 
alienation to an outsider may be forbidden, or allowed 
only by common consent of the original group,^^ while 
the right to acquire new land by clearing requires a 
more definite assent from the community or chief as 
it becomes more valuable. 

12 The Iroquois lived in joint houses containing from five to twenty 
families and made common store of the food, which was duly distributed 
among the component families by the superintending matron. The 
Creeks lived in clustered houses, practising a similar communism (Mor- 
gan, Houses and House Life, etc, pp. 64-68). 

13 The evidence does not justify us in laying down a fixed order lead- 
ing from the community through the kin to the individual. It is more 
likely that development followed a different course among different 
people. 

14 Thus, among the Kayans of Borneo, according to Niewenhuis { Quer 
durch Borneo), unbroken land is accessible to any one, but land once 
tilled passes into private ownership and may be let or exchanged. 
Among the Hill Dyaks, according to Ling Roth {Natives of Sarawak), 
land is abundant within the tribal limits, but very little is individual 
property, except the private plots near the houses, which are saleable. 
The locality of the farms is generally settled by the council of the tribe, 
so that one road may serve all. Among the Sea Dyaks a man acquires 
a title to the land by clearing it. 

15 So in early mediaeval Germany, Schroder, Lehrhuch der deutschen 
Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 207-8. 



18 PEOPERTY 

Again, the community may retain a general control 
of cultivation, and may remain the guardian and ulti- 
mate court of appeal on questions of the rights and 
duties of its members, and on all customs regulating 
the common life. On this side, the old principle sur- 
vived into the manorial courts of our mediaeval system. 
Furthermore, the cultivation of the arable is not self- 
sufficient. As agriculture develops it requires beasts 
of burden, and a right of grazing on the common pas- 
ture and the use of the waste are essential to the main- 
tenance of the tillage. But the pasture and the waste 
remaiji common; and if there is meadow land, its use 
is duly apportioned by the community in accordance 
with the needs of each holding. Lastly, if holdings be- 
come unequal and unsuited to the needs of families, 
there may be a conscious effort to maintain the part- 
nership by a system of periodical redistribution, as 
in the case of the Russian mir. 

Systems like these, though compatible with a con- 
siderable development of individual ownership, are still 
so far primitive that they associate property, not with 
power, but with use.^^ At least until property begins 
to press on the means of subsistence, every boy on 
growing to manhood will have the basis of his life- 
economy secured to him by the social structure. He 
will succeed to his share in the family land, with the 
right to pasture, meadow and waste, which it carries 
with it; and if, through the growth of the family, the 
lot has become too narrow, he will readily gain the 
consent of the community to an additional clearing in 
the was]te. If the pressure of population has begun, 
it is more likely to lead to trouble with neighbouring 

16 In more than one hundred descriptions of land tenure among agri- 
cultural and pastoral peoples of simple culture, I have onlyt found ten 
cases in which a system of letting or leasing land is suggested. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 19 

peoples than with landlessness and poverty at home. 
Its effects will be seen in tribal nnrest, migrations, and 
wars of conqnest. Here then is one possible root of 
disorganization. But there are others. Men are by 
nature unequal, and one family will thrive while 
another decays. If debt- slavery — particularly for non- 
payment of the wergild— is recognized, men will fall 
into the hands of creditors for whose benefit in future 
they may have to till the land, and prisoners of war 
may be put to the same use." Whole tribes, indeed, 
may become tributary to a stronger people.^* Within 
the community the growth of military organization in- 
volves the elevation of the chief and his trusted fol- 
lowers into a nobility standing above the mass of the 
free men, and this elevation implies at some point or 
another a corresponding depression. Some one must 
serve, if some one else is to have leisure to be a noble- 
man. 

But apart from these tendencies, there is another 
economic movement on which we have not yet touched. 
In some regions of the world, particularly on the 
steppes of Eastern Europe and Asia, the pasture land 
provides opportunity for a different form of develop- 
ment from the hunting stage. The possession of flocks 
and herds is far more free from communal restrictions 
than the tilling of the soil; and even if the herds are 
family property, the power of the father among these 
peoples is often so great that he deserves to be called 
the true owner. But what is more important, property 
in flocks and herds can wax and wane with ease and 
celerity; and in pastoral societies accordingly, the dis- 

17 For serfs of this type among the Germans, see Tacitus, Germania, 
25, Schroder, op. cit, pp. 46, 47. 

18 Even a tribe of hunters like the South American Mbaya hold the 
neighbouring Guanas in a form of serfdom, compeUing them to till 
land for them. 



20 PEOPEETY 

tinction of rich and poor readily makes its appearance. 
Some pastoral tribes indeed are slaveholding. In 
others the poorer members of the community suffi- 
ciently supply the need/^ The definite appearance of 
the man who is neither provided for as a slave, nor by 
his own hereditary share in the common basis of sub- 
sistence, seems to be especially associated with the 
pastoral stage, and in agricultural societies to be at 
least largely influenced by the pastoral element. It was 
in the end the enclosure of the pasture and the waste 
which destroyed the remains of the common field sys- 
tem in this country and achieved the ruin of the small 
holder.^^ 

This slight sketch may serve to show the general 
character of the economy from which the mediaeval or- 
ganization of Western Europe was evolved. The whole 
problem of the antecedents of the manor is still en- 
tangled in endless controversy; but a survey of the 
anthropological data on the whole confirms the view 
that at the back of the entire process we must place 
**a village community of shareholders which cultivated 
the land on the open field system and treated all other 
requisites of rural life as appendant to it. ' '^^ The only 
question is as to the extent to which within this com- 
munity private property was developed or eminent 
control maintained. In any case it is probable that 
land was originally held for use, and that its value to 
its separate owner was conditioned by the right which 
it carried to that part of the area which was undeniably 
common. But we have seen that from the first this 

19 Or there may be a subject tribe who are hewers of wood and 
drawers of water. Cf. Nieboer, Slavery as an Industrial System, who 
finds ten clear cases of the presence and twelve of the absence of slavery 
among pastoral folk (p. 262 ff. ). 

20 See Tawney, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century; and 
Hammond, The Village Labourer. 

21 Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 365. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY 21 

system was compatible with inequality, and we have 
noted several methods by which the inequality might 
develop. In our own country in the early Middle Ages 
the growth of the king's power, and then the grant of 
judicial privileges and correlative fiscal duties to pri- 
vate people, together with corresponding grants to the 
Church, were continuously at work to convert the 
village into the manor.^^ Now in the manor the culti- 
vators had certainly to work for the lord as well as 
for themselves. The lord's property is held **for 
power," or perhaps more strictly it is the economic 
appanage of the legal power which he holds over the 
inhabitants — it is power held for property. At the 
same time one good feature of the older system sur- 
vives. The ordinary child is still born into a system in 
which the basis of his work and his livelihood is as- 
sured to him. He has his virgate or half virgate. At 
worst— -if not a slave^^— he is a cottar with a few acres 
and the right by practice, if not by stringent custom, 
to the pasture and the waste. Unfortunately these 
rights were insecure, and when the strain came, when 
it became profitable to lay down pasture, to enclose the 
demesne, and to encroach on the waste, there was no 
one but the freeholder who was in a firm position for 
resistance.^* In the break-up of the manorial system 
the serf gained his freedom, but he lost his land. The 
outline of the story has now been pretty clearly made 
out, but is too long and complex even for summary 
here.^^ With the upshot we are familiar — on the one 
hand private ownership denuded of the old public obli- 

22 Cf. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond. 

23 Chattel slavery disappeared in England during the twelfth century. 

24 On the position of the copyholders and the customary tenants, see 
Tawney. 

25 See the works already cited of Mr. Tawney and Mr. and Mrs. 
Hammond; also The English Peasantry and the Enclosures, by Gilbert 
Slater. 



22 PEOPEBTY 

gations; on the other, a landless proletariate whose 
chief economic privilege is that its members are free 
to leave their homes and do better elsewhere ; and be- 
tween them the farmer owning his stock but renting his 
land. 

The appearance of the capitalist farmer is, however, 
only a minor symptom of a vast change in the nature 
of property which has developed pari passu mth the 
private ownership of land on the large scale. In early 
society we could virtually treat land as the one neces- 
sary basis of subsistence ; and the fact that land could 
not be accumulated in private hands apart from per- 
sonal occupation was noted as a preservative of the 
common life. In the pastoral stage, however, we saw 
accummulation of a different kind, and the growth of 
flocks and herds, the first form of true capital, at 
once involved the distinction between the possessing 
and non-possessing classes. The development of indus- 
try and commerce has always engendered the same dis- 
tinction, and has set a problem to legislators whether 
in Athens or in Kome or in our own time. But as in- 
dustry is more productive, so accumulation proceeds 
on a vastly greater scale in our own civilization; and 
while the borders of political, religious, national, and 
one may say social, freedom have widened, the inequal- 
ities of wealth have only increased. Yet it is not in- 
equality as such that is the fundamental fact of our 
system. It is the entire dependence of the masses on 
land and capital which belong to others. Five out of 
six, I suppose, of the children now born, are born to 
no assured place in the industrial system. They have 
of their own no means of subsistence. They have 
hands and brains, but they have neither land to till nor 
stock to till it with. What is more, only a fraction of 
our population could be supported by agriculture ; and 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPERTY 23 

for the cotton spinner, the railway man, or the coal 
miner, there is no sense in talking of his owning the 
means of production as an individual. The rise of 
large-scale industry has abolished the possibility of any 
form of individualism as a general solution of the 
economic problem. 

Thus, while modern economic conditions have virtu- 
ally abolished property for use — apart from furniture, 
clothing, etc. ; that is, property in the means of produc- 
tion, for the great majority of the people — they have 
brought about the accumulation of vast masses of 
propert:^ for poiver in the hands of a relatively narrow 
class. The contrast is accentuated by the increasing 
divorce between power and use. The large landowner 
stood in some direct governing relation to his estate. 
Eesponsibility went with ownership, and even survived 
the explicit association between land tenure and politi- 
cal functions. The capitalist employer, who began to 
be differentiated from the workman in the earlier part 
of the modern period, and who was the prominent fea- 
ture of the first two generations of the industrial revo- 
lution, was still, as the name implies, the employer as 
well as the capitalist. He himself, that is to say, was 
actively engaged in carrying out the function which his 
property made possible. But with the progress of ac- 
cumulation there came further differentiations. It be- 
came more and more indisputable that the possession 
of capital was one thing and the conduct of business 
another; and with the rise of the joint-stock system 
capital became so split up into shares and stocks that 
it has come to be for its owners nothing more than a 
paper certificate, or an entry in the books of the Bank 
of England, which they have never seen, meaning to 
them only what it brings in by the quarter or the half 
year. And yet these investments, this capital, is the 



24 PEOPEETY 

governing force in the lives of thousands and millions 
of men scattered throughout the world. It is the instru- 
ment by which they are set in motion, by which their 
labour is sustained, above all, by which it is directed 
and controlled. The divorce of functions is complete ; 
and what wonder if the owner of capital presents him- 
self to the imagination of the workman merely as an 
abstract, distant, unknown suction-pump, that is draw- 
ing away such and such a percentage of the fruits of 
industry without making a motion to help in the work! 
Lastly, behind the mass of the investors, is the finan- 
cier who shuffles all these abstract pieces of capital 
about, controls their application, takes his commission 
on the proceeds, and constitutes himself the working 
centre of industry and commerce. The institution of 
property has, in its modern form, reached its zenith 
as a means of giving to the few power over the life of 
the many, and its nadir as a means of securing to the 
many the basis of regular industry, purposeful occu- 
pation, freedom, and self-support. 

5. Some Theories of Property 

With these few illustrations of the diversity of forms 
which the institution of property has assumed in the 
course of social evolution, we may usefully compare 
some distinctive theories which have been held by 
thinkers of its basis and functions. We may consider 
first those who have attacked the institution of private 
property altogether, in the interests of conmiunism; 
secondly, those who have found a general justification 
for the institution of private property either in its 
economic or in its ethical value ; and thirdly, those who 
have held that the solution lies in the discrimination 
of kinds of property and the function which each sev- 
erally performs. 



y 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 25 

(a) Property has sometimes been attacked on phil- 
osophical, sometimes on religious grounds. In the 
Bepuhlic, the object of Plato is to set out in clearest 
possible outline the picture of a completely imified 
State. The State is to be so compact a unity that, if 
one of its members suffers, it is to feel that it suffers 
in that member, just as when the finger aches the man 
feels the ache in the finger. Looking over the rallying 
points at which the individual can assert himself 
against the social unity, Plato finds them conspicuously 
in family life on the one hand and in property on the 
other, and he succeeds to the abolition of both ; at any 
rate, the guardians, who are to lead the highest, the 
most completely social, and the most fully philosophic 
life, can have no room in their minds either for family 
or for economic cares^ Communism is advocated in the 
interests, not of enjoyment but of austerity; and in 
this the Platonic philosophers may be regarded as pro- 
totypes of the monastic community. In both cases it is 
open to criticism to maintain that social unity is pushed 
to a point at which personality is obliterated, and that 
the independence of material things is expressed in a 
form in which it defeats itself. Man cannot live with- 
out material things, and in so far as he is dependent 
for his necessaries on the will of others, his life is 
also dependent upon these others. Where he cannot 
move hand or foot without them, he abandons self- 
direction, and the self-denial, which was to give spiri- 
tual freedom, ends by denying autonomy altogether. 

But the principle of property was also criticized in 
antiquity from the point of view of Natural Law. 
Property, it was clear to the thinkers who introduced 
this conception into ethics, was a human institution. 
The gifts of nature, the land and its fruits, must orig- 
inally be free to all men; appropriation was the act of 



26 PEOPERTY 

man, and the institutions by wMch appropriation is 
regulated derived from man-made laws. Just as by 
nature all men are free and equal, so by nature they 
have a right to use the earth and its fruits for their own 
purposes, to apply their labour to them freely, and to 
enjoy the product at their will. 

This conception of a natural Conmiunism underlying 
the institutions of positive law was taken up by the 
Early Church, where it fused with the conception of a 
Christian Communism, based, not on the Platonic 
principle of an abstract unity, but on the ideal of 
brotherly love and mutual aid as between co-religion- 
ists,* the sons of one Father, the members of one house- 
hold. This was an ideal which could only be effective 
among the members of a small community; and when 
the Church had seriously to undertake the problem of 
reconciling State law with Christian ethics, it had to 
fall back on the Stoic distinction between the law of 
nature and the positive institutions of government. 
The fabric of society was accepted, and though Com- 
munism is proclaimed as the law of nature at the out- 
set of the Canon law, it is not so interpreted as to direct 
or to qualify those institutions of State which deter- 
mine the conditions on which property is held, and by 
which wealth is distributed, excepting in so far as it 
secures the levy of a tax on wealth for the service of 
the Church and of the poor. The theory of Commu- 
nism, as qualified by respect for established institu- 
tions, becomes a doctrine of charity. 

In point of fact, as a political doctrine, Conmiunism 
is an emotion rather than a system. In a small com- 
munity it has its place. Every family, while the mem- 
bers live together, *is in essence a communistic unit; 
and Communism may be conceived as operating suc- 
cessfully among any small group of enthusiasts as long ' 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 27 

as the enthusiasm is maintained. In the larger world 
the communal principle has its place only in respect 
of the enjoyment of those things in which no correlative 
performance of duty is requisite. Public spaces, recre- 
ation grounds, the advantages of lighting, and, in some 
respects, of cleaning, sanitation, order and good gov- 
ernment, are common property in the strict sense of 
the term. Everybody can enjoy them without payment, 
for some of them are things which cannot exist at all 
unless they are available for every one, and others 
cost no more when available to all than they would if 
restricted to a few. But Communism of this kind only 
touches the outside of life. 

(b) For the regular working of the economic order 
it has been clear to most thinkers that there must be 
some systematic apportionment of the instruments of 
production, and the fruits of industry. The social or- 
ganism has many functions, and each function requires 
its due stimulus and sustenance ; hence the most popu- 
lar theory of property associates it with the right to 
labour and the product of labour. On this basis Locke 
^ds a justification for property antecedent to positive 
law. By the law of nature the earth stood open to all 
men, but also by the law of nature a man had the right 
of property in his own person, and in that which he 
wrought with his hands. Accordingly, that in which he 
** mixed his labour" became his own, and this would 
include the portion of soil which he reclaimed by occu- 
pation and tillage. But in this conception, as Locke 
apparently recognizes, property is limited by use: **As 
much as any one can make use of to any advantage of 
life until it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix, 
and property in whatever is beyond this is more than 
his share, and belongs to others." Hence Locke pro- 
tests that his theory is incompatible with ** engross- 



28 PROPEETY 



ing." Unfortunately he only works it out for ** Amer- 
icans/' as typical instances of people who live under j 
conditions where land is still superabundant. ''"And [ 
when he comes to consider property as an established 
institution of organized society, he can only tell us 
what is painfully obvious, that **it is plain that the con- 
sent of men have agreed to a disproportionate and un- 
equal possession of the earth— I mean out of the bounds 
of society and compact, for in governments the laws 
regulate it, they having by consent found out and 
agreed in a way how a man may rightfully, and with- 
out injury, possess more than he himself can make use 
of, by receiving gold and silver. "^^ 

Locke, it is true, states in general terms that laws 
and government ought to accommodate themselves to 
the principles of natural law; and if we press tliis 
principle in the case of property, it seems clear that 
Locke might be led, if he were living now, to somewhat 
radical conclusions. Be this as it may, we find in Locke 
the basis of a view which is at once a justification of 
property, and a criticism of industrial organization. * 
Man has a right, it would seem, first to the opportunity 
of labour ; secondly, to the fruits of his labour ; thirdly, 
to what he can use of these fruits, and nothing more. 
Property so conceived is what we have here called 
property for use. The conception is individualistic, 
but it may be given a more social turn if we bear in * 
mind, first of all, that society as a collective whole is 
that which determines the structure and working of 
economic institutions; and secondly, that in a society 
where men produce for exchange, labour is a social 
function, and the price of labour its reward. Locke's 
doctrine would then amount to this, that the social right '' 
of each man is to a place in the economic order, in 

29 Second Treatise on Civil Government, chap. v. 



THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY 29 

which he both has opportunity for exercising his facul- 
ties in the social service, and can reap thereby a reward 
proportionate to the value of the service rendered to 
society." 

(c) But there exists a much more radical Individual- 
ism than Locke 's, \vhich also ascends to antiquity. The 
Aristotelian criticism of Plato proceeds partly from 
the just conception that unity is only one feature of 
social life, and that the true connnunity must be a 
whole of many diverse parts. It rests also upon the 
conception that property is among the external good 
things which are necessary to the full expression of 
personality. In emphasizing this side of the matter^^ 
it may be allowed that Aristotle lets the communal 
principle evaporate into a mere pious aspiration. Pri- 
vate possession and common use is a pleasant phrase, 
but, we may safely maintain, remains a mere phrase. 
It is no organic law for society to lay down, that men 
should use their possessions in the spirit of the proverb 
that *Hhe things of friends are common.'' 

The centre of this line of thought is the conception 
that property is an instrument of personality, and in 
that form it has been revived and has played an im- 
portant part in modern thought. In general terms, 
what has been said at the outset will have justified this 
principle by anticipation. Material things that a man 
can count upon as his own, that he can leave and return 
to, that he can use at his wiU, are, w^e have admitted, 
the basis of a purposeful life, and therefore of a ra- 
tional and harmonious development of personality. But 
as a basis of the institution of property this principle 

2T For some further account of Locke's doctrine and criticism of it 
see Essay II., in which also will be found a fuller account of Aristotle's 
theory of property than is needful for the purpose of the next para- 
graph. 

28 Hid. 



30 PEOPEETY 

carries with it consequences which seem too often to 
be overlooked. On the one hand it carries the condem- 
nation of a social system in which property of the kind 
and amount required for such development of person- 
ality is not generally accessible to all citizens, who do 
not forfeit their right by misfeasance. A society which 
should accept this principle, could not tolerate any; 
thing like the existing distribution of wealth, could not 
permit those methods of accumulation which concen- 
trate wealth in the hands of the few, and leave the 
many — so far as the practical object of earning their 
living is concerned — as naked as they were born. Cher- 
ished as a Conservative principle, it has in it the seed 
of Eadical revolution. And secondly, if this principle 
would require the universal distribution of the means 
of subsistence, it would also limit the accumulation of 
property by the measure of that which is healthy for 
the soul. The possession of property which emanci- 
pates from toil, the possession of property which 
makes, not for the guidance of self, but for the control 
of others, stands on this principle condemned ; and what 
is a justification of property becomes a reprobation of 
riches. Ethical individualism in property, carried 
through, blows up its own citadel. 

{d) There remains the Socialistic conception of 
property, the term by which in general we may express 
any theory which distinguishes between the appropria- 
tion of the means of production and the appropriation 
of the fruits of labour. The difficulty of this theory, 
considered merely as a theory — for we are not here 
concerned with practical applications — is, in the first 
place, to discriminate neatly between the two kinds of 
property; and in the second place, to determine the 
conditions of access for the individual to the means of 
production, and the ethical basis and measure of his 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPEETY 31 

reward. But at the outset let ns be clear as to the 
distinction between the Socialistic principle and the 
Communist. To the Communist all things are equally 
the objects of enjo^nnent, without payment made or 
service rendered. To the Socialist — or indeed to any 
society so far as the socialistic principle is applied- 
property is not common to all, but is held in common 
for all, and its assignment or apportionment is a matter 
of collective regulation. There is no enjoyment with- 
out a correlative performance of function. The prob- 
lem before the Socialist has always been to consider 
how this collective regulation can be accommodated 
to the free initiative and enterprise of the individual; 
and it may be doubted whether, upon purely socialistic 
principles, this problem is capable of solution. 

The problem is complicated by the psychological 
difficulties of democratic organization. We talk easily 
of a conmion property, of a common industry directed 
to the common good and organized by the general will ; 
but where is the general will? Is it a figment of the 
rhetoricians, or is it a working reality in actual lifef 
In practice, does it mean a collective decision, to which 
the ordinary man contributes, and in which therefore 
his personality may, in a genuine sense, be said to be 
expressed? Or does it mean the fiat of statesmen and 
of experts, sheepishly accepted by the crowd because 
they see no way of escaping it? On the former alter- 
native, collective property might truly be regarded as 
having that same organic relation to personality as is 
possessed by the peasant's plot of ground in relation 
to the proprietor, who knows the capacity of every 
square yard of it. In the latter alternative, collective 
industry becomes a mechanism, in which each man 
might be reduced to the part of an unthinking cog, 
grinding his grind with no more freedom than the 



32 PEOPERTY 

factory hand under the capitalist employer, and withi 
no more sense of the social value of his work than the; 
machine-minder performing a fragmentary process ini 
the manufacture of an article, which, whether sound I 
or unsound, wholesome or unwholesome, will go to the i 
use or the annoyance or the injury of people whom he ' 
has never seen and never will see. Considerations 
such as these have led some of the more generous 
minds of our own time to look for the reform of prop- 
erty rather in a revived individualism than in further- 
ing the collectivist tendencies, which, of late years, 
have influenced legislation. Their ideal would be 
something like the mediaeval organization, without its 
restrictions on personal freedom. They sigh for the 
day of the small landed proprietor and the master- 
workman. 

In relation to the land this conception, no doubt, has 
a certain limited applicability; but in the main its de- 
velopment seems barred by the hard facts of economic 
development, making for the large scale of production 
and the complex interchange of goods throughout the 
world market. Yet the principle is in so far just that 
it recognizes an indestructible core of value in the idea 
of property. Only it has to be maintained that, if 
private property is of value, for reasons and within 
limits that have been indicated, to the fulfilment of 
personality, common property is equally of value for 
the expression and the development of social life. The 
problem of modern economic reorganization would 
seem to be to find a method, compatible with the indus- 
trial conditions of the new age, of securing to each 
man, as a part of his civic birthright, a place in the 
industrial system and a lien upon the common product 
that he may call his own, without dependence either 



THE EVOLUTION OF PEOPERTY 33 

upon private cliarity or the arbitrary decision of an 
official. 

The other side of this problem is that of securing 
for the State the ultimate ownership of the natural 
sources of wealth and of the accumulation of past gen- 
erations, together with the supreme control of the 
direction of industrial activity and of labour contracts. 
We cannot reconstitute the early commune. We can- 
not secure for each man his inheritance, his virgate, 
and his plough team. What we have to aim at would 
seem to be an analogous relation between the individual 
and the community, adapted to the complexity of mod- 
ern conditions, combining the security of the old re- 
gime with the flexibility and freedom of the new, partly 
by education and training, partly by the supervision 
of industrial organization. We have to restore the 
contact between the individual and the instruments 
of labour. We have to assure him of continuity in 
employment, and—given reasonable industry and thrift 
— ^of provision against the accidents of life and the 
periods of helplessness. And for these purposes we 
have to restore to society a direct ownership of some 
things, but an eminent ownership of all things material 
to the production of wealth, securing ** property for 
use'' to the individual, and retaining ** property for 
power'' for the democratic state. 



n 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 
OF PEOPEETY 

BY 

The Kbv. HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.Litt., F.BA. 

FELLOW AND LECTUBER IN PHILOSOPHY, NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 
CANON OF HEEEFOBD 



SUMMARY 

The Platonic Utopia lias little bearing on modern controversies. Aris- 
totle understood the advantages of private property, but was not an 
extreme Individualist. Defects of his treatment due to (a) his not 
appreciating the functions of Capital, (&) not seeing that his con- 
demnation of Usury would apply to the land-owner. His argument 
(against Plato) for private property contains in germ the best that 
has ever been said on the subject. But his views presuppose an aristo- 
cratic class-morality. 

Stoicism and Christianity both contributed to a more universalistic 
and humanitarian morality. Views of the Fathers, Canonists, and 
Jurists. The legal idea that property can be acquired by occupatio 
passes into an ethical justification of property. 

Locke's attempt to base property upon natural law by assuming that 
a man has a natural right to his own labour and to everything ( including 
land) with which he mixes his labour. Difficulties and inconsistencies 
of the theory, which contradicts itself, since its application would violate 
the natural right of the landless man to his labour. This seen by Karl 
Marx and the a priori Socialists, who made the same principle the basis 
of extreme Socialism, i.e., the principle that a man is entitled to the 
whole produce of his labour. The theory cannot be applied in practice. 

Impossible to settle the question by any a priori theory. Duties and 
rights cannot be ascertained without an appeal to social consequences. 
This recognized by Hume and Utilitarians. 

Many later thinkers would accept the view that property can only 
be justified by its tendency to promote the public good without admit- 
ting that "good" means only pleasure. 

Locke's principle on the whole followed by Kant. 

Kant's influence produced a tendency in Idealists generally to treat 
the rights of property as natural rights, e.g. in Hegel; but Hegel's 
influence valuable (a) in promoting a more spiritual view of the State 
and its functions, (6) in emphasising the influence of property upon 
character — its necessity as an expression of personality. 

The extreme Individualism of Herbert Spencer based on same prin- 
ciple as Locke's, aided by a misapplication of the Darwinian doctrine 
of the "struggle for existence." He failed to see that private property 
implies as much State interference as Socialism. 

The influence of Hegel on T. H. Green and other English Idealists. 

The general tendency of modern political thought is to base the 
justification and the limitation of property-rights upon their social 
effects, including moral effects. 

Bosanquet's insistence upon the necessity of private property for the 
development of character: a man's future must depend upon his own 
efforts and foresight. 

Value of the principle admitted — as also the importance of liberty 
for social development, even if this liberty can only be fully enjoyed 
by the few. 

Criticism of Professor Bosanquet: (a) he seems to forget that Social- 
ism does not condemn private property but only private capital; (&) he 
too readily assumes that private property must always imply the present 
rights of inheritance and capitalisation; (c) while rightly insisting on 
the good effects of property upon character, he ignores the intense selfish- 
ness promoted by the present system of almost unlimited competition. 

The problem of the future is gradually to modify the institution so 
as to secure its good effects, economic and moral, without its injustices 
and other bad effects. The whole question must be solved by an appeal 
to the social effects of different systems, not by any a priori principle. 

36 



II 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 
OF PKOPERTY 

A HisTOKiCAL Survey akd Criticism 

It will be impossible in a short article to dwell on the 
earlier history of speculation on this subject. Plato's 
drastic treatment of the institution must be passed 
over altogether; and after all, the Platonic Utopia has 
little bearing on modern controversies, for it was ap- 
parently only for a particular class that his Com- 
munism was designed. It w^ould be more to the point 
to dwell upon the theories of Aristotle; for there is 
much in his treatment of the subject which is of the 
highest significance for the modern world. Nobody 
understood better the advantages of private property 
as an institution ; and yet he was far indeed from the 
position of modern Individualists. His fundamental 
thought was that property was an instrument of life 
—of the highest life; and he recognized that not an 
unlimited but a limited amount of property was neces- 
sary for such a life. For him the ideal arrangement 
was that half the land of the state should be held in 
common and only half held by private owners, and he 
thought it desirable that in the original distribution 
of wealth extreme inequalities should be avoided; but 
he was far too keenly alive to the dangers of Eevolu- 
tion {(TTaaLs) — that ever-present peril in the ancient 
City-state — ^to favour a compulsory expropriation of 

37 



38 PEOPERTY 

existing owners. His objection to lending money upon 
interest does perhaps imply some suspicion of the 
moral difficulties connected with it : but he had no con- 
ception at all of the true functions of capital, and so 
fell into the economic fallacy so familiar to us from 
the speech of Antonio in the Merchant of Venice, that 
usury is wrong because ** barren metal" does not 
breed. It never occurred to him that, though money 
does not breed, it will buy a cow which does breed. 
If A borrowed from B £20 for a year, and bought there- 
with a cow, and then proposed to hand B back the cow 
(or the £20 which it cost) and keep the calf, the absurd- 
ity would be evident. Nor did he recognize that, if all 
lending upon interest is to be condemned, the condem- 
nation would fall as much upon the aristocratic land- 
owning citizen — the type with him of all that was 
excellent and respectable — as well as upon the despised 
alien money-lender. In fact Aristotle was far too much 
imbued with the prejudices of the aristocratic class to 
be capable of discussing the subject in any fundamen- 
tal manner. The ethical question as to the justification 
of private property and private capital (he, of course, 
does not distinguish between them) is never fairly 
raised. So far as the problem is raised and answered, 
the answer amounts to this: That material wealth is 
necessary as a condition of the higher life; and that 
some measure of private property is more conducive 
to the higher life than any form of common ownership, 
because (1) it tends more to real unity of sentiment 
(the raison d'etre of the Platonic Utopia) than Com- 
munism; (2) it is economically superior to it, for 
people bestow more attention upon the management of 
private than of public property; (3) ownership is a 
source of pleasure ; and (4) it is more conducive to the 
growth of character, for Communism destroys the pos- 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 39 

sibility of exercising two important virtues, self-con- 
trol and Liberality/ It is not too much to say that we 
have here an outline of the best that has ever been said 
in defence of private property; but the difficulties of 
the subject are not appreciated. Aristotle's intensely 
aristocratic moral theory, according to which virtue 
was only possible to gentlemen of education and ^* pri- 
vate means," while the slave and even the free artisan 
(if he was not a citizen) were mere means to virtue or 
noble life in another, prevented his arriving at any 
fully thought out theory which could be acceptable to 
those who have rejected his narrow civic and class 
morality. 

Both Stoicism and Christianity contributed to the 
establishment of a more universalistic and more hu- 
manitarian ideal of life. And there is much in the 
teaching of the Christian Fathers, as well as of the 
Stoic Philosophers and of the great Roman Jurists 
(the earlier of whom were powerfully affected by Stoic 
ideas, and the later also by Christianity), which would 
be well worth examining if space allowed (see below, 
Essays IV.-V.). Within our limits it is only possible 
to remark that the Christian teachers were for the 
most part occupied merely with the question of pri- 
vate ethics, not of State regulation : in so far therefore 
as they felt scruples about the justification of large 
private wealth, the moral drawn was simply an incul- 
cation of almsgiving. So far as there is any definite 
ethical theory of property, the general tendency is to 
admit that originally, and therefore *' naturally," all 
things were common, but that private property is 
necessitated by that corruption of human nature which 
was brought about by the Fall. Still, in so far as the 
actual state of human nature required such a private 

1 Aristotle, Politics, ii. pp. 1261 b-1263 b. 



40 PROPERTY 

appropriation of goods, this very necessity constitutes 
a certain justification for it. So far the tendency was 
to treat the laws of property as a branch of positive 
law, and to find the justification for them in the same 
considerations which justified the State in general.^ 
During the Middle Ages the question of the right and 
justification of the State's authority was a matter of 
lively controversy. The Decretum of Gratian — the fa» 
mous text-book of Canon Law which appeared about 
1142 — finds the origin and justification of the State in 
a supposed original contract; and though it had to 
contend with other theories, the tendency during the 
latter portion of this period was towards a general 
acceptance of the theory which found the justification 
of the State in a contract or agreement, the duty to 
observe which belonged to natural law and was itself 
independent of State enactment. It was implied in 
this theory that all property rights must be derived 
from the authority of the State, and must therefore be 
liable in the last resort to be overruled for the public 
good by that authority. At the same time the absolute- 
ness of the power which this view seemed to give to 
the State — that is, practically in most cases to a mon- 
arch who was becoming more and more despotic- 
made the defenders of law and public right unwilling 
to acquiesce in a view which placed all property at the 
mercy of the ruler, and anxious to find a basis for their 
rights in the requirements of natural law. This was 

2 For further information as to patristic and mediaeval views about 
property, see Essay V.; also Carlyle, History of Mediaeval Political 
Theory in the West, I. chap, xii., II. chap, ii., etc.; Gierke, Political 
Theories of the Middle Age, ed. Maitland, pp. 78 sq., 178 sq. et passim^ 
It must be remembered that the ancient and mediaeval thinkers were 
largely prevented from taking a strong view of the naturalness or sacred- 
ness of property by the fact that for them property included slaves. 
The tendency was therefore to rest its justification solely upon the 
authority of the State. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 41 

done by what we may call an ethical application of 
the purely legal theories about occupatio. The Jurist 
as such was not concerned with the strictly ethical ques- 
tion, but he was concerned with the question how and 
when private property was to be recognized, how it 
was to be distinguished from that which was not prop- 
erty at all or which was in some sense common prop- 
erty — ^in fact what constituted a valid title to property : 
and this question was one which to some extent in- 
volved the historical question as to the origin of private 
property. Nov^ it was a simple matter of historical 
fact that one at least of the ways in which private 
property began was by some person or persons *^ occu- 
pying ' ^ or appropriating to his or their own use some- 
thing which previously was unappropriated {res 
nullius) ; and the Roman Law recognizes such occu- 
patio as a valid title to property. So far the theory 
was merely legal and historical; but it was an easy 
step to find in this historical fact an ethical justifica- 
tion of the institution. This occupatio was morally 
justified by the theory that the appropriation involved 
labour, and that this labour gave the appropriating 
individual a right to the fruits of his labour, in accord- 
ance with the provisions of natural law. That a man 
who takes the trouble to cut down a tree in a wild and 
unappropriated forest and make a canoe of it should 
be allowed to keep the canoe and reserve it for his 
exclusive use, is indeed so natural and convenient an 
arrangement that it has been recognized by most primi- 
tive peoples and savage tribes. This recognition is not, 
we are told, universal; in some primitive communities 
the tribal instinct is so strong, and the recognition of 
the individual's claims so weak, that there would not 
be the smallest notion that the making of a canoe gave 
a man any title to prevent his fellow tribesmen using 



42 PEOPEETY 

it on the following morning. Still, on the whole, pri- 
vate ownership in things actually and obviously created 
by labour is a fairly primitive and fairly universal 
human institution. And it was natural enough to ex- 
tend the same mode of thinking to the case of cultivated 
land, though the more careful study of primitive his- 
tory has taught us that as a rule the first appropriation 
and cultivation of land was the work of groups rather 
than of individuals. It was tempting to the philos- 
opher in search of a theoretical justification of prop- 
erty to accept this natural instinct of appropriation, 
and the legal notions which had grown out of it, as an 
ultimate solution of his difficulties and not to go behind 
it. Sometimes the justification was eked out either by 
utilitarian considerations or by the theory of a general 
consent, given either directly to the principle that occu- 
pation or labour constitutes ownership, or indirectly 
as a corollary of the general agreement that the State 
which has sanctioned this arrangement is to be obeyed. 
I shall not attempt to follow the growth of these 
ideas through the Fathers, the Jurists, the Canonists, 
the Schoolmen, the modern juristic thinkers like Gro- 
tius, or the earlier modern Philosophers. The subject 
is not prominent in the earliest modern Philosophers, 
except quite incidentally as a department of Ethics. 
Speaking very broadly, the general tendency was to 
defend the institution of private property and the pro- 
hibition of theft on utilitarian grounds, as conducive 
to the good of human society, whether that good was 
made to consist in mere pleasure (as with Hobbes) or 
in some higher kind of Well-being. I will pass imme- 
diately to the writings of Locke, whose version of the 
theory already touched upon — the natural right of the 
fruits of one 's labour — ^has become the basis of almost 
all the attempts of modern philosophers to base the 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 43 

justification of private property upon some a priori 
principle, and not upon the gronnd of general utility 
and convenience. 

Strictly speaking, Locke was himself a pure Utilita- 
rian. In his Essay he strenuously denies the existence 
of any *4nnate practical principles,'' and occasionally 
in his Treatise of Civil Government he attempts to 
defend the doctrine that labour confers ownership on 
utilitarian grounds—as a means to the general good; 
but in general, when dealing with this subject— as in- 
deed in his political speculation generally — ^he entirely *- 
forgets his utilitarian principles, and treats the theory 
as if it were indeed an * Annate practical principle." 
The explanation of this curious lapse is to be found in 
the circumstances of his time. There was a general 
agreement among the thinkers too enlightened to accept 
the High Anglican divine right of Kings, that the 
authority of Government must be found in a supposed 
original contract. Primitive men had elected a Sov- 
ereign and agreed to obey him, and there is a tacit 
agreement of living men to go on obeying the State. 
The chief subject of dispute was as to the limits of ' 
the authority thus conferred. Hobbes, as a champion 
of Absolutism in the State — that is to say, as regards 
England, of absolute Monarchy— treated that author- 
ity as practically unlimited.^ Locke as a Whig was 
interested in setting limits to it. In particular he en- 
deavoured to turn the familiar Whig doctrine * ' No tax- 
ation without representation" from an accepted maxim ^ 
of the English constitution, or a convenient under- 
standing for any developed political community, into 
an absolute ethical principle. He admitted that Mon- 

3 See the early chapters of his Leviathan. The theory had been 
already adopted by Hooker in the first chapter of his Ecclesiastical 
Polity, 



44 PEOPERTY | 

archy might be a lawful form of govermnent when 
established by general agreement. In such a govern- 1 
ment a King might make laws and issue orders, and j 
it was the duty of the subject to obey them, but there; 
was one thing which the most absolute monarch in^ 
the world could not lawfully do: he could not take aii 
sixpence out of his subject's pockets without his ex-' 
press consent given personally or by representation. 
The King could make laws under which the subject! 
could be shot; he could enter upon a war and compel! 
him to fight in it and be shot by the enemy; he could! 
interfere with his liberty and convenience in a thou-- 
sand ways without any consent except the assumed! 
consent to enter into political society ; but no original 
consent or consideration of social advantage, how^ever 
pressing, could overcome the inherent sacredness of 
the breeches pocket. To maintain this theory it was 
necessary to represent that the institution of private 
property did not depend simply upon any laws made 
by the Sovereign, but was part of the law of nature, 
and as such existed already in the supposed state of 
nature prior to the institution of civil society. It 
rested upon the law of nature. 

Hobbes had represented the state of nature as one 
in which there was absolutely no law and no morality, 
no duties and no rights. Every man could do what 
he liked and take what he liked — checked only by the 
equally comprehensive right of every one else to do 
the same. Only when men had entered into a contract 
to obey a common superior did any rights or obliga- 
tions arise. Not so with Locke. According to him 
individuals in a state of nature had certain rights and 
certain corresponding duties, discernible by the light 
of nature and prescribed by its laws. Among these 
**laws of nature," or self-evident moral principles, 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 45 

was this : that every man has a right to his own person, ^ 
to his own labour, and to that with which he mixes 
his labour. 

*' Though the earth, and all inferiour creatures, be common 
to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person : i^ 
this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his 
body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly 
his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature 
hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, 
and joined to it something'^ that is his own, and thereby makes 
it his property. It being by him removed from the common 
state nature hath placed it in, hath by this labour something 
annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men. 
For this labour being the unquestionable property of the 
labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once 
joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in 
common for others, 

* * He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under a 
oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has 
certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny 
but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin 
to be his? when he digested! or when he eat? or when he 
boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked 
them up ? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not 
his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between 
them and common ; that added something to them more than 
nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they 
became his private right. And will any one say he had no 
right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because 
he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? was 
it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in 
common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had 
starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. ' ' * 

Private property in land can be acquired in the 
same way — by mixing one's labour with it — though in 
a state of nature these rights are qualified by certain 
important reservations. In the first place, a man may 

* Treatise of Civil Government, chap. v. $$ 27, 28. 



46 PEOPEETY 

only appropriate as mnch wealth as he can use. * * The 
same law of nature that does by this means give us 
property, does also bound that property too. *God 
has given us all things richly' (i Tim. vi. 12). Is the 
voice of reason confirmed by inspiration? But how 
has He given it us? *To enjoy.' As much as any one 
can make use of to any advantage of life before it 
spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in. 
Whatever is beyond this is more than his share, and 
belongs to others." ^ Thus if a man plucks apples and 
heaps them up beneath the tree, his labour in plucking 
them gives him a right to appropriate them. The 
next wayfarer coming along must starve rather than 
touch them; but if the plucker lets any of the apples 
perish uneaten, he is a thief. This restriction is meant 
no doubt to apply to the case of land as of other prop- 
erty. But in the case of land in particular a very 
significant restriction is (as we have seen) introduced, 
though in a hesitating manner — '*at least where there 
is as much and as good left for others. ' ' Private prop- 
erty in land may have been justified on these principles 
**in the beginning" or when **all the world was Amer- 
ica"; but it is difficult to see how he could have thought 
that it justified private property as it existed in Eng- 
land at the end of the seventeenth century. 

What shall we say to this theory? Is it self-evident 
that a man has a right to all that his labour produces ? 
Eights are meaningless except as the converse of du- 
ties. To say that a man has a right to all that his 
labour produces, means that other people are under a 
moral obligation to let him enjoy all that his labour 
produces. Is it self-evident that they ought to do this, 
even if the consequences to Society should be disas- 
trous? Was a party of primitive men — ^if we presup- 

5 Ibid. $ 31. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 47 

pose Locke's nnliistorical conception of primitive life 
—wandering over an unappropriated prairie, morally 
bound to allow an individual who had got a few miles 
beyond them to appropriate all the available apples or 
acorns or dates? Ought they to starve rather than 
interfere with his hoard, until it was proved by expe- 
rience that he had appropriated more than he could 
consume? And then, if we concede the right to what 
the labour produces, what about the material with which 
he chooses to *^mix his labour ''? Labour produces 
nothing without some material, which is always in the 
last resort some part of the soil or of the things that 
grow out of it. May a man mix ever so little labour 
mth ever so much raw material, and yet secure a right 
over that material for himself and his heirs for all 
timef May he by merely constructing a ring-fence 
round some thousand acres of the best soil, or perhaps 
lightly scratching its surface with a plough, secure 
that property to himself, his heirs, and assigns for 
ever! If we concede that his labour gives him the 
property in it for his lifetime, what about his heirs 
who have not laboured upon it1 Is there any self- 
evident principle which determines what is to become 
of it after his death! Locke assumes that the English 
liberty of bequest (not altogether unlimited in Locke's 
time) was the *' natural" arrangement. Yet a will of 
lands was only made possible by a statute of Henry 
VIII. ; and in case of intestacy three separate systems 
of distribution prevailed (and still prevail) even within 
the limits of England. In the greater part of the 
country the whole of the real estate goes to the eldest 
son ; in certain parts of the county of Kent it is equally 
divided in accordance with the custom of Gavelkind; 
while in other parts of the country it all goes to the 
youngest son, in accordance with the custom of Bor- 



48 PEOPEETY 

ougli English. Are all these arrangements in accord- 
ance with the law of nature? Locke would probably 
have urged that these were modifications of the law 
of nature introduced by the State-made or civil law, 
which derived its authority from the social contract. 
But it is not apparent how the contract, the obligation 
to keep which itself rests upon a principle of natural 
law, can override other laws of nature which are (ac- 
cording to Locke) as sacred and absolute as the law 
that contracts shall be kept. And after all the law of 
nature only conferred a limited right of property. 
What has become of the limitations which restricted 
property to as much as a man could use and no more, 
and qualified even this principle as regards land by 
the **at least when there is as much and as good left 
for others"? 

The best wa^^- of criticizing Locke's theory is to show 
that, when thought out, it contradicts itself. Let us 
suppose that ten men appropriate a desert island, di- 
vide it among themselves, and cultivate their respec- 
tive shares. Each of them has ten sons, and having 
a taste for '^founding a family" leaves his share to 
the eldest. In the next generation there will be ten 
landlords and ninety landless men. These men have 
a sacred, natural right to the fruits of their labour: 
but how are they to exercise it? They will say to the 
elder brothers: **We have a right to labour: let us 
work on your lands." **By all means," the elder 
brothers will say, **on condition of paying over to us 
all that the land produces over and above what will 
keep you and your families." In that way the prin- 
ciple contradicts itself. The rights of property, sup- 
posed to be derived from a man's natural right to 
the fruits of his labour, involves the negation of that 
right in the non-inheritors of property. This is exactly 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 49 

what Karl Marx and the a priori Socialists saw. They 
accepted Locke's own principle, and expressed it in 
the only logical form — **the labourer has a right to 
the ivhole produce of his labour." But this right is 
defeated by any private appropriation of land and 
capital; therefore all land and capital, all the * instru- 
ments of production," must be held in common. Thus 
the same principle which was intended by Locke as 
the basis of a system of extreme Individualism, has 
be«3ome the corner-stone of a system of extreme and 
thorough-going Socialism. Upon the premises it can- 
not be denied that the socialistic application is the 
more logical. And yet in one way the socialistic? appli- 
cation is open to the same fundamental objection as 
Locke's. It might possibly be applied to a very primi- 
tive society in which each individual, or rather each 
family, produced by their own unassisted efforts 
everything that they wanted. But in a piece of cloth 
woven in a modern factory, who shall say how much 
of the finished product was really due to the weaver, 
how much to his assistant, how much to the shepherd 
who tended the sheep, how much to the merchant who 
brought it to market! And then the soldier, the mag- 
istrate, the policeman, the schoolmaster, the builder, 
who all indirectly took part in its production, will 
reasonably contend that they too assisted to make that 
piece of cloth, and will demand their shares. But the 
maxim gives us no guidance as to the principle upon 
which the resulting wealth is to be divided between 
ail these classes of labourers without all sorts of sup- 
plementary principles, about the justice or reasonable- 
ness of which endless disputes arise. And then after 
all, as Locke saw", the appropriation of Capital by the 
State only settles difficulties of distribution so long as 
** there is as much and as good left for others." The 



50 PKOPERTY 

Karl Marx theory may justify the appropriation of' 
land as between the members of a particular section 
inter se ; but it assumes the appropriation of the whole 
country by a particular community, and this cannot 
be justified as against the inhabitants of less favoured 
regions, if labour alone can confer a title to the enjoy- 
ment of wealth. Nobody has created the soil with 
which the man has mixed his labour. The fundamen- 
tal question which Locke's theory raises is, whether 
any principle for the regulation of property or the 
enjoyment of wealth can claim to be self-evident apart 
from all considerations of social effects. 

It cannot be too strongly insisted that the question 
of property is only a particular department of the 
more general question, whether there are any a priori 
self-evident rights ; and that in turn depends upon the 
question whether there are any duties which can be 
laid down a priori, and without reference to the social 
effects of conduct. Eights are meaningless apart from 
duties ; if all duties spring in the last resort from the 
duty of promoting the general good, then rights must 
also be shown to spring from the same principle. This 
was seen by Hume, who is generally regarded as the 
founder of modern Utilitarianism, the system accord- 
ing to which all duty consists in promoting the general 
good — interpreted to mean nothing but happiness in 
the sense of pleasure. The system was really much 
older than Hume. But Hume did much more than 
his predecessors in attempting to apply the principle 
to the details of duty ; and he made a much more sys- 
tematic attempt than they to meet some of its obvious 
difficulties. One of the most conspicuous of these was 
connected with the question of property. If an act is 
always right which produces a maximum of happiness, 
how could any act be more justifiable than to pick the 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 51 

pocket of a Duke, who wonld not feel the loss, and to 
give the proceeds to a beggar to whom it would give 
much pleasure ? Hume met this difficulty by the great 
utilitarian principle of the general rule or the long- 
run. Many isolated acts might produce happiness, 
which would be socially disastrous if generally imi- 
tated. 

To make this (the principle that the idea Justice is based 
npon Utility in an indirect and artificial way) more evident 
consider, that tho' the rules of justice are establish 'd merely 
by interest, their connexion with interest is somewhat singular, 
and is different from what may be observ 'd on other occasions. 
A single act of justice is frequently contrary to public inter- 
est; and were it to stand alone, without being follow 'd by 
other acts, may, in itself, be very prejudicial to society. When 
a man of merit, of a beneficent disposition, restores a great 
fortune to a miser, or a seditious bigot, he has acted justly and 
laudably, but the public is a real sufferer. Nor is every single 
act of justice, consider 'd apart, more conducive to private 
interest than to public ; and 'tis easily conceiv 'd how a man 
m.ay impoverish himself by a signal instance of integrity, and 
have reason to wish, that with regard to that single act, the 
laws of justice were for a moment suspended in the universe. 
But however single acts of justice may be contrary, either to 
public or private interest, 'tis certain, that the whole plan or 
scheme is highly conducive, or indeed absolutely requisite, 
both to the support of society, and the well-being of every 
individual. 'Tis impossible to separate the good from the ill. 
Property must be stable, and must be fix'd by general rules. 
Tho' in one instance the public be a sufferer, this momentary 
ill is amply compensated by the steady prosecution of the rule, 
and by the power and order, which it establishes in society. 
And now every individual person must find himself a gainer, 
on balancing the account; since without justice society must 
immediately dissolve, and every one must fall into that savage 
and solitary condition, which is infinitely worse than the 
worst situation that can possibly be suppos'd in society.® 

6 Treatise of Human Nature, Pt. ii. § 2. 



y 



52 PEOPERTY 

From Hume the Utilitarian principle passed to 
Jeremy Bentham and Ms followers, the first school 
who were actually called Utilitarians. Hume himself 
was a man of very conservative views, and little social 
or humanitarian enthusiasm. The application which 
he gave to his doctrine of property was eminently 
conservative; the rights, practically the unlimited 
rights, of property had no more ardent champion than 
this sceptical and very destructive thinker. Bentham 
was, of course, a zealous social reformer; and would 
heartily have favoured any attempt to modify the ac- 
tual legal rights of property in any way which would 
tend to promote the public happiness. But the Ben- 
thamites were not Socialists. They were, most of them, 
ardent champions of a Psychology which regards the 
individual's love of his own pleasure as the supreme 
motive in human conduct, and of a Political Economy 
which was based upon that psychology, and which was 
consequently disposed to defend the system of private 
capital, with the inducements which it offers for indi- 
vidual exertion and accumulation, as absolutely essen- 
tial to the public good. With the economic theory we 
are not now concerned. It is enough to point out that 
according to the Utilitarian school the rights of prop- 
erty spring ultimately from their tendency to promote 
the public good. This is a principle in which both the 
most ardent Individualist and the most extreme So- 
cialist may agree. And there has been, on the whole, 
a general (though of course not by any means a univer- 
sal) disposition ever since the time of Bentham to 
argue the question of property upon this basis — upon 
the question of its social effects. Karl Marx, indeed, 
based his Socialism upon an a priori principle ; but of 
late the controversy between Socialism and its critics 
has generally been conducted on the assumption that 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 53 

the Utilitarian criterion is to be accepted. The ques- 
tion has been simply which system has the greatest 
tendency to promote the public good. The principle 
of Utility is practically assumed in discussing ques- 
tions of politics or public policy by many who would 
(however inconsistently) refuse to apply it to the de- 
tails of private morals; and it has been even more 
universally accepted in popular controversy than 
among professed philosophers. 

The most important qualification of the Utilitarian 
principle which has been introduced among philoso- 
phers is that most of them refuse to accept the view 
that the good is identical with pleasure. Many of those 
who would agree with Bentham in making the justifi- 
cation and the limitation of property-rights (as of all 
other principles of conduct) depend upon their ten- 
dency to promote the Well-being of human society, 
decline to follow him in thiriMng that Well-being means 
simply pleasure, and that pleasures differ only in 
quantity, not in quality. They will agree with Ben- 
tham as to the impossibility of pronouncing upon the 
morality of any human act apart from its conse- 
quences ; they will differ from him as to the character 
of the consequences which have to be taken into con- 
sideration. They will admit that what appear at first 
sight self-evident moral rules are found on a little 
reflection to contradict themselves, to involve excep- 
tions really based on considerations of social well- 
being, and to be really incapable of being laid down 
with any definiteness or precision without reference to 
such considerations. They will contend that we do 
not really understand what an act is until we under- 
stand its consequences, so far as these can be foreseen : 
and if consideration of consequences is once admitted, 
it is arbitrary to stop at any particular point. Ideally, 



54 PEOPEETY 

an act is right which tends to promote the largest pos- 
sible amount of true human Well-being.^ If so, the 
duties which the institution of property imposes must 
be defended on exactly the same principle — ^by their 
tendency ultimately (with immense stress on the ulti- 
mately) to promote this end. But it does not follow 
that true human Good or Well-being consists solely in 
a greatest qiiantum of pleasure. Many of those who 
would agree with Bentham in appealing to conse- 
quences, would insist strongly that morality or char- 
acter or the good will is an end in itself and the most 
important element of Good; that intellectual and 
aesthetic activity are lil{:ewise valuable in themselves 
and not merely on account of the pleasure which they 
produce; and that, though pleasure is certainly an ele- 
ment in Well-being, its value depends upon its kind 
or quality and not merely upon quantity. Further to 
develop this view or the history of the controversies 
connected with it belongs to moral rather than to 
political philosophy. I can only point out that the 
question of property is part of a wider ethical prob- 
lem; and that if we accept a consequential or 'Heleo- 
logical" theory of Ethics, we are bound to make the 
justification of property depend upon the same prin- 
ciple. But I must now return for a moment to the 
a priori theories held by those who refuse to accept 
the teleological theory,^ whether in its hedonistic or 
its unhedonistic form. 

For the most part the modern attempts to place the 

7 I have developed the ethical theory here presupposed in my Theory 
of Good and Evil, and more briefly in a little volume on Ethics in "The 
People's Books" Series. This view may conveniently be styled "Ideal 
Utilitarianism." 

8 I.e., a theory which finds the test of the morality of an act in the 
end which it promotes: the term "Utilitarianism," when used without 
explanation or qualification, is generally used to imply that this end 
is maximum pleasure. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 55 

rigihts of property upon an a 'priori basis have followed 
very much the lines laid down by Locke. Kant, who 
introduced such a ^^Copernican revolution" in Meta- 
physics, was the author of no new principle in politics. 
He accepted the social-contract view as to the origin 
|and authority of the State in its crudest and most 
^individualistic form, and he based property, like Locke, 
Jon what we may call the divine right of grab. The 
^ first occupier acquired thereby a sacred right to the 
ownership of it for all eternity. He introduced a quali- 
fication of the theory which brings out with peculiar 
distinctness its wholly unethical character. He held 
that a man has only a right to so much property as 
he can defend, and on this basis attempted to place on 
an a priori footing the convenient but arbitrary rule 
of international law which makes the dominion of 
States extend three miles into the sea, this being in 
Kant's time the maximum range of artillery.® "What 
Natural Law will have to say when the guns on both 
sides of the English Channel can equally sweep the 
middle of the intervening waters is a problem which 
he has naturally not discussed. In Kant, however, the 
theory as to the way in which property could be ac- 
quired in a state of nature was seriously modified in 
its application to organized civil society. In civil 
Isociety property can only be acquired by the implicit 
^iconsent of Society, to which the State itself owes its 
jiauthority. And the proper limits to the State 's author- 
iity are fixed by the principle that the State's duty is 
ito exercise the minimum of restraint under which the 
Imaximum liberty of each shall be compatible with the 
maximum liberty of every other. By a maximum of 
|liberty he did not mean any of the subtler ethical ideas 
I which have been read into the phrase by later Idealists 

9 Kant's Philosophy of Law, Eng. trans, by Hastie, pp. 82-92, etc. 



56 PEOPERTY 

who have used the same language, but simply freedom L| 
from constraint. It would be impossible further to 
develop Kant's view of property without discussing' 
his whole conception of the nature of the State and, 
of human society. It will be sufficient to say that the ii 
influence of Kant has produced a disposition among- 
idealistic Philosophers to regard the rights of prop- 
erty as natural rights. We find in them a tendency 
to use the formulae of the old individualist theories, 
but to give them an attenuated or sublimated meaningc 
Hegel, for instance, — the most influential of these 
writers, — tells us that *'a person has the right to direct 
his will upon any object, as his real and positive end» 
The object thus becomes his. As it [the object] has 
no end in itself, it receives its meaning and soul from 
his will. Mankind has the absolute right to appropriate 
all that is a thing. ' ' ^^ It will be observed that in this 
passage Hegel passes from *^a person" to ''mankind'' 
as though the change made no difference. Nothing 
can be more reasonable than that ''mankind" has a 
right to appropriate material things; nothing more 
unreasonable than to say that any individual has a 
right to appropriate any object he pleases, without con- 
sidering the effects of such appropriation upon others. 
In so far as Hegel is the asserter of a vast system of 
absolute, isolated, self-evident "rights," his system 
is open to all the objections which we have noticed to^ 
Locke's theory and to the intuitive systems of Rights 
and of Morals generally. As regards such questions 
as that of property, his speculations were prevented 
from leading to any really satisfactory results by his 
determination at all costs to defend the existing order 
of Society and even the most accidental peculiarities' 
of the Prussian Constitution of his time. Every Prus- 

10 PhilosophA/ of Right, Eng. trans, by Dyde, p. 51. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOKY 57 

sian institution is shown to flow from a necessity of 
thought: in England and France apparently the de- 
velopment or self -manifestation of the *4dea" had 
constantly gone wrong. But in two ways Hegel con- 
tributed to a better theory of property. In the first 
place, although he still used much of the old individ- 

jjualistic language, he had a more *^ organic'' view of the 
nature of Society and a juster view of the functions 
of the State. He took a more spiritual view of the 
functions which the State could perform, and conse- 
quently the moral as well as the merely economic 
advantages of private property begin to come into 
prominence. In the second place he insisted upon one 
particular advantage of property by making much of 
the doctrine that property is an expression of person- 
ality. Sometimes this doctrine is in Hegel couched in 
somewhat bombastic and by no means illuminating 
language : * * To appropriate is at bottom only to mani- 
fest the majesty of my will towards things," and so 
on. Merely to say that property is an expression of 
personality does not really close the controversy; for 
after all, why should personality be expressed except 
in so far as this is a means to human good or actually 
constitutes that good? The real difficulty of the prob- 

jlem begins where these expressions of my personality 
begin to get in the way of other people expressing 

jtheir personalities too. But the doctrine does supply 
a much needed corrective to the ordinary utilitarian 
view, and has tended towards the recognition of the 
importance both of character and of intellectual devel- 
opment as elements in the total Well-being at which 
both legislation and individual conduct should aim. 

In order to keep our review of modern thought on 
jtMs subject within limits it will be weE to confine our- 
iselves to two of the more recent tendencies of political 



58 PEOPEETY 

thought, and to take our illustrations from this coun- ! 
try only. Towards the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the influence of the Utilitarian School in its 
Benthamite form began to be disputed by the growth 
of a school which professed to found its doctrine upon j 
the Darwinian doctrine of Evolution. The most pop- ' 
ular representative of this tendency was Herbert 
Spencer. His Ethics were fundamentally Utilitarian ; ^ 
but he attempted to extract from the teaching of Dar- 
winism the doctrine that, as a means to the increase of 
pleasure, it was essential that the struggle for existence 
should go on unchecked by excessive State interfer- 
ence. Any meddling with private property which went 
beyond the most indispensable taxation was held to ^ 
constitute such an excessive interference; and in his 
zeal for Individualism he revived what was substan- 
tially the theory of Locke, and justified the extremest 
view of the sacredness of property on the ground of 
a man's natural right to the produce of his labour. 
The total inconsistency between this theory and the 
** scientific" Utilitarianism which he professed in his ♦ 
ethical writings appears to have escaped his notice. 
He defends the principle as a self-evident or a priori 
truth, and expressly identified his teaching with that 
of Kant, professing (as was his wont) that he was in , 
no way indebted to that philosopher (whom he had j 
not read) or to any other previous thinker. He pushed ( 
his practical conclusions far beyond the point reached 
by Kant (who, with all his Individualism, was not quite 
uninfluenced by the German respect for the State), and 
treated the Free Libraries Act as a mere piece of rob- 
bery on the part of Parliament — as much so as the 
act of any private individual who should walk into my l 
library and help himself to my books. This a priori 
theory has already been sufficiently examined. As to 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 59 

the attempt to reinforce it by the application of Dar- 
winism to politics, it will be enough to say here that 
it assumes that the system of private property involves 
a less measure of State interference than a system of 
Socialism or even Communismc A very little reflec- 
tion will show that it is not through an unrestricted 
struggle for existence, through laisser-faire on the part 
of the State, that an infant of two inherits on the death 
of his father a landed estate extending over half a 
countj^ It is rather owing to an extreme interference 
on the part of the State with the ** natural right" of 
the strong man to grab the vacant estate, and to the 
employment of a host of legal officials, police, and (if 
necessary) soldiers to prevent the fight for the prop- 
erty which in a ** state of nature" would inevitably 
ensue upon the death of the last owner. While the 
popularity of evolutionary theories in the region of 
Ethics is by no means at an end, this political applica- 
tion of the Darwinian theories is too much out of 
harmony with the practical tendencies of the age to 
exercise very much influence. One stiU sees a ten- 
dency towards an individualistic application of the 
*^ struggle for existence" doctrine among men of scien- 
tific education; but neither in the region of practical 
politics nor in that of political speculation can Spen- 
cerianism as a system now be regarded as a very 
serious force. 

The other new factor in recent political thought 
comes from the gradual diffusion among university 
students, and through them among a wider public, of 
German Idealism, especially in its Hegelian form, and 
also, it may be added, of the Platonic and Aristotelian 
view of the State which was to a large extent the source 
of what is best in the political thought of Hegel and 
his disciples. In England the first writer who exer- 



60 PEOPERTY 

cised a powerful influence in this direction was Thomas 
Hill Green, who first as a tutor of Balliol and then as 
Professor of Moral Philosophy was the most influen- 
tial teacher of philosophy in Oxford for some twenty 
years before his early death in 1882. Most of the 
recent contributions to political thought of the more 
speculative type owe a good deal to the teaching of 
Hegel, either directly or through Green. I may add 
that, though the debt to Hegel is undoubted, the ver- 
sion of his teaching which is given by his English 
disciples is far clearer, freer from absurdity, and more 
soberly thought out than is the presentation of it in the 
writings of Hegel himself. The reader who begins 
with Green's Principles of Political OhMgation and 
goes on to HegePs Philosophy of Righf will probably 
feel that there is little of value in Hegel which is not 
better put by Green. 

The versions of HegePs theory about property which 
are to be found in the writings of his English disciples 
naturally vary according to the degree of their own 
approach to Socialism. In the writings of Green the 
Hegelian reverence for the State and the Hegelian 
respect for property as the expression of personality 
are about equally prominent. His strong sense of the 
necessity of property for the building up of character 
led him, however, not so much to exalt the sacredness 
of property in the hands of the large owner, as to 
insist on the necessity of such legislation as would 
tend to the diffusion of property as widely as possible 
among the masses. A more socialistic version of the 
Hegelian teaching is to be found in the writings of 
the late Professor Eitchie ; while of a more individual- 
istic interpretation the most conspicuous representa- 
tive is Professor Bosanquet. 

Our present concern is, however, not so much with 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY 61 

practical applications or deductions as with the theo- 
retical determination of the ultimate principle by which 
the question as to the best way of distributing the 
fruits of industry ought to be decided. When stripped 
of technicalities, the general tendency of modern politi- 
cal philosophy — at least as represented by the more 
idealistic or spiritualistic writers — is towards the view 
that the justification of the institution lies in its ten- 
dency to promote for the whole community a Well- 
being which is not to be identified with pleasure, but 
which includes the development of character and intel- 
ligence as well as pleasure. Property is, as Aristotle 
held, an instrument of the best and highest life. That 
arrangement of property is best which tends to secure 
such a life for the whole community or for as many as 
possible. It is clear that if this view of the justification 
of property be adopted, not the same system will be 
suitable at every time and place. Everywhere the 
established system has a prima facie claim to accept- 
ance. Some system for apportioning wealth is the 
very first condition of social well-being, and the main- 
tenance of any such system is always better than an- 
archy and confusion. But every improvement in the 
established system which will tend to promote that 
end better has every justification which can be claimed 
for the existing system. And the existing system loses 
its justification the moment it is shown that it can be 
improved. It is extremely important to realize that 
the question is not as to the rival claims of two sharply 
opposed, cut and dried systems — one a system of pri- 
vate Capitalism and the other a system called Social- 
ism. Private property has meant an immense number 
of different things at different times and places. 
Everywhere there has been some subordination of pri- 
vate property to the authority of the State in the 



62 PEOPERTY 

interests of general welfare; and everywhere some 
collective ownership has subsisted side by side with 
private ownership. The King or the State, the Munici- 
pality and all sorts of other corporations, have every- 
where been large property-owners ; and all States have 
exercised some sort of control over the use men make 
of private property. The practical question is, **By 
what system will men be most stimulated to make a 
maximum contribution to the general welfare, and what 
system will lead to the widest possible di:ffusion of the 
highest kind of lifef Under different conditions 
every system, from a tolerably extreme individualistic 
system of private property to a rather extreme col- 
lectivism, might be the best possible for the particular 
time and place. To devise the best possible system for 
a given time and place is a question rather of practical 
politics than of political theory. 

Are there then, it may be asked, no limits to the 
socialization of industry which might conceivably be 
desirable under particular circumstances? Could a 
complete suppression of all private property be con- 
ceivably the best system under certain conditions ? Or 
is there any sense in which we may say that a right 
to private property is one of the eternal and unchange- 
able '* rights of man"? It is probable that the un- 
changeable character of human nature will always set 
strict limits to the possibility of dispensing with indi- 
vidual and family interest as a stimulus to the produc- 
tion of wealth; and some liberty of individual action, 
some sphere for the operation of individual enterprise 
and energy, will always be desirable on economic 
grounds. But a much more certain ground for insist- 
ing on the permanent necessity of private property as 
an institution is to be found in what has already been 
said as to the necessity for the development of char- 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 63 

acter. Some liberty of action, some form of arranging 
one 's own life in advance, some freedom of choice, and 
some certainty that a man will experience the results 
of his choice, are essential to the development of char- 
acter; and this there cannot be unless there is some 
permanent control over material things. Supposing 
the whole object of life were to secure a maximxma 
average of enjoyment to each individual, it is quite 
conceivable that, if only certain initial difficulties of 
organization could be got over, a higher average could 
be reached by some extreme communistic arrangement 
under which any man, woman, or child would be *Haken 
in and done for" by the State or the Municipality — 
fed, clothed, instructed, amused, provided with a set 
task, compelled to work — from the cradle to the grave. 
Not so, if the object we have in view is the calling out 
into activity the individuars best and most varied 
energies, moral and intellectual. Nobody has expressed 
this more forcibly than Professor Bosanquet. Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet's Essay on *^The Principle of Pri- 
vate Property," in the collection of Essays called 
Aspects of the Social Prohlem^ is perhaps the best 
brief treatment of the subject which has ever been put 
into print. He insists that for a man to have every- 
thing provided for him reduces him to the level of a 
child. 

Let us take the child in the family as the extreme type, 
and leave out any imitation of grown-up life which his parents 
may introduce by way of discipline, by taking away what he 
wastes or spoils, and so forth. His relation to things has no 
unity corresponding to his moral nature. No nerve or con- 
nection runs through his acts in dealing with the external 
world. So with his food; he may waste or throw away his 
food at one meal, he gets none the less at the next (unless by 
way of discipline). He gets what is thought necessary quite 
apart from all his previous action. So too with his dress. 



64 PEOPERTY 

The dress of a young child does not express his own character 
at all, but that of his mother. If he spoils his things, that 
makes no difference to him (unless as a punishment) ; he has 
what is thought proper for him at every given moment. So 
with travel, enjoyments, and education up to a certain point. 
What he is enabled to have and do in no way expresses his 
own previous action or character, except in as far as he is 
put in training by his parents for grown-up life. The essence 
of this position is, that the dealings of such an agent with the 
world of things do not affect each other, nor form an inter- 
dependent whole. He may eat his cake and have it; or he 
may not eat it and yet not have it. To such an agent the 
world is miraculous ; things are not for him adjusted, organ- 
ised, contrived; things simply come as in s fairy tale. The 
same is the case with a slave. Life is from hand to mouth; 
it has as such no totality, no future, and no past. 

Now, private property is not simply an arrangement for 
meeting successive momentary wants as they arise on such a 
footing as this. It is wholly different in principle, as adult or 
responsible life differs from child-life, which is irresponsible. 
It rests on the principle that the inward or moral life cannot 
be a unity unless the outward life — ^the dealing with things — 
is also a unity. In dealing with things this means a causal 
unity, i.e. that what we do at one time, or in one relation, 
should affect what we are able to do at another time, or in 
another relation. I suspect that the difficulty in accepting this 
principle is largely due to a mistake about inward morality- — 
to treating the pure will for good as if it could exist and con- 
stitute a moral being without capacity for external expression. 
This is a blunder in principle. If all power of dealing effect- 
ively with things is conceived absent, inward morality, or 
the good will, vanishes with it. I will return to this point in 
dealing with the ''no margin'' doctrine. 

Private property, then, is the unity of life in its external or 
material form; the result of past dealing with the material 
world, and the possibility of future dealing with it; the gen- 
eral or universal means of possible action and expression 
corresponding to the moral self that looks before and after, 
as opposed to the momentary wants of a child or of an animal. 
A grown man knows that if he does this he will not be able 
to do that, and his humanity, his powers of organisation, and 
intelligent self-assertion, depend on his knowing it. If he 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 65 

wants to do something in particular ten years hence he must 
act accordingly to-day; he must be able in some degree to 
measure his resources. If he wants to marry he must fit him- 
self to maintain a family; he must look ahead and count the 
costj must estimate his competence and his character. That 
is what makes man different from an animal or a child; he 
considers his life as a whole, and organises it as such — that 
is, with a view to reasonable possibilities, not merely to the 
passing moment/^ 

All this is perfectly true and admirably put. The 
necessity for some liberty and some variety of exter- 
nal circumstances and modes of life for the highest 
intellectual development is another important consid- 
eration which has been much insisted upon by such 
writers as Durkheim and Simmel. And here it is im- 
portant to notice that the plea for liberty is not suffi- 
ciently met by insisting, as has been so eloquently and 
humorously done by Mr. Lowes Dickinson, upon the 
absurdity of supposing that the propertyless labourer 
under the ordinary capitalistic regime enjoys any lib- 
erty of which Socialism would deprive him.^^ For it 
may be of extreme importance that some should enjoy 
liberty— that it should be possible for some few^ men 
to be able to dispose of their time in their own way — 
although such liberty may be neither possible nor de- 
sirable for the great majority. That culture requires 
a considerable differentiation in social conditions is 
also a principle of unquestionable importance. But it 
must not be assumed that liberty and differentiation 
and opportunities for the development of character 
in some or all can only be secured by a continuance 
of the whole system of private Capital as it is now 
omderstood. 

11 Essay on "The Principle of Private Property," in Aspects of the 
Social Problem, pp. 309-311. For a more elaborate treatment of the 
subject see his Philosophical Theory of the State. 
.( ^2 Justice and Liberty: a Political Dialogue (1908), e.g. pp. 129, 131. 



66 PEOPEETY 

Professor Bosanquet and many other philosophical 
critics of Socialism seem to forget that Socialism does 
not aim at the extinction of private property bnt only 
at that of private capital. Under any scheme which is 
socialistic without being commnnistic, private property 
might very well exist in the only sense in which the 
vast majority (say) of Post Office employees now] 
own property. A postman under Socialism would be 
able to enjoy property ^ith all its moral advantages 
as fully as now, except that he would be unable to get 
interest on the few pounds which he might at present 
save and put into the Savings Bank. It could scarcely 
be contended that the right to get a few shillings inter- 
est upon such savings is absolutely necessary to a 
man's moral well-being. Professor Bosanquet assumes 
much too readily that the moral advantages of Social- 
ism could not be secured without the permission of 
capitalization and of inheritance. No doubt, when we 
think not so much of the moral effects upon the average 
individual as of the advantage to the community gen- 
erally of having some persons in a position to choose 
their own tasks and dispose of their own leisure, the 
difficulty of getting the advantages of property with- 
out these incidents of our present capitalistic system 
becomes much greater. / 1 am myself disposed to think 
that the institution of property cannot bring with it 
its full advantages, economic, moral and social, with- 
out some form of capitalization and some rights of 
inheritance, however much these rights may be cur- 
tailed and controlled by the State. But the form which 
it is desirable that the institution of property should 
assume must be settled by detailed argument as to its 
advantages and disadvantages; it must be settled by 
experience, and with reference to each particular stage 
of social development. We cannot justify the whole 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOEY 67 

capitalistic system en bloc by the bare formula that 
property is necessary to the development of individual 
character. The most that we can claim, as a general 
principle applicable to all stages of social development, 
lis that without some property or capacity for acquir- 
|ing i)roperty there can be no individual liberty, and 
^that without some liberty there can be no proper de- 
iveiopment of character; and further that considerable 
leisure and liberty of action, such as is now secured 
by private capital and inheritance, for some persons 
must always be socially desirable. In this sense we 
may lay it down that the institution of property is one 
Jof the permanent conditions of social Well-being or 
(if we please) one of the inalienable ** rights of man." 
The exact form which it should assume must be settled 
for each particular stage of social development and 
each particular country by the gradual accumulation 
of experience, the gradual development and the grad- 
ual criticism of detailed suggestions for social improve- 
ment. 

I Another remark that may be made upon Professor 
'Bosanquet's defence of private property is that, while 
he admirably develops the good effects of the present 
system upon character, he seems almost blind to the 
bad effects upon character of the present almost un- 
limited competition and facility for accumulation. It 
is undoubtedly a mistake to talk as though all that was 
required for ** character ' ' was a vague and flabby '* al- 
truism.'^ In the interests of Society itself such virtues 
as industry, foresight, self-reliance, self-respect, and 
the like are quite as important as the more obviously 
and immediately other-regarding virtues. But the 
intense selfishness fostered by our present system must 
not be ignored. I must, however, leave to other writers 
the further discussion of the problem of Property in 



g$ PEOPEETY 

its practical application. The leading idea which. I 
have attempted to bring out by means of this brief 
historical sketch is that the justification of property 
must depend not upon any a priori principle but upon ; 
its social effects. Among these effects a prominent' 
place must always be given to its effects upon char-' 
acter, and the justification of every proposed amend- 
ment of the institution as it now exists must depend 
upon these same principles. The problem of the future 
is to devise a gradual modification of the system by 
which its advantages — the encouraging of industry^ 
originality, energy, enterprise, individuality which it 
affords, the measure of liberty for all and the greater 
liberty which it secures for a few, the training in J 
character and the development of individuality, the 1 
sense of responsibility and of family solidarity which] 
it encourages — shall be secured without the outrageous | 
inequalities, the material hardships and uncertainties, [ 
and the injury to character which are produced alike ' 
by excessive wealth and excessive poverty. 



Ill 

THE PEINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PEOPEETY 



BY 



A. D. LINDSAY, M.A, 

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 



SUMMARY 

The principle of private property has the twofold character of all 
rights. It is a right vested in individuals thought of as set over 
against one another, and it requires the recognition and protection of : 
society for its existence. Extreme views which neglect either of these ^ 
aspects are too obviously wrong to need consideration. Differences of 
opinion about the right of property arise as too exclusive attention is 
paid to the claims of the solidarity of society or of the independent 
development of its individual members. The first attitude gives rise 
to the view that property is entirely the arbitrary creation of society, 
the second to the view that society must recognize the right of prop- 
erty but cannot modify or control it. The attempt to make the right 
of property inherent in the individual apart from society is false to 
the facts of the creation of wealth. Yet the denial of such rights often 
leads to mere political opportunism. The good of society is the cri- 
terion of rights, but that good can only be expressed in the good 
lives of individuals. Private property can only be defended as a 
condition of the good life. 

Before such defence is attempted it must be noticed that the right of 
private property has taken the most diverse forms, and the same defence 
will not serve all forms. ^ 

We might try to find a defence of private property in the necessary 
separation of men in some respects. If the production of wealth is 
co-operative, much consumption is necessarily separate. But property 
in things that are separately used, in so far as they are so used, is not 
the principle of private property but of Communism. Communism is 
an attempt to confine property to use. The disadvantages of such an 
attempt to distinguish property in matter not in use and in matter 
in use, and confine the first to the community, are that it is hardly 
compatible with the discovery of new uses and needs, that it gives 
enormous power to those who govern the community, and that it takes 
from the individual the necessity for deliberation and foresight. Private 
property is essential to the full development of the individual. 

This, however, is not an objection to Socialism, which defends private 
property in goods to be consumed but attacks it in the means of pro- 

70 



PEINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PEOPERTY 71 

iuction on the ground that the production of wealth is co-operative. 
Consideration of the difficulty of distinguishing between the means of 
consumption and of production shows that most property does not 
bonsist in things but in power over other men, and suggests that the 
real basis of the attacks on property is the evils of the irresponsible 
power it bestows. 

Nevertheless something can be said for private property in the meana 
of production. Although the production of wealth is co-operative it is 
|not therefore impossible to distinguish between the different values of 
Ithe work of different individuals, and it is essential to encourage in 
iindividuals originality and invention. Giving to certain individuals 
Ipower to direct and organize the work of others is also essential. The 
principle of private property in the means of production may be de- 
iifended as being but the carrying out of the principles of "tools to those 
Ivv^ho can use them." 

On the other side the following considerations must be noted: 

1. This defence does not apply to the rights of bequests and inheri- 
tance, which must be defended on very different grounds. 

2. . The amount of money earned by any individual may represent only 
very roughly his power to serve society. 

3. The fact that the power given to individuals by private property 
tends to efficiency when rightly used, does not remove the evils pro- 
duced by the irresponsible use of that power. We are still faced with 
the problem of how we can combine efficiency with control in the 
interests of society. But this is precisely the problem of the control 
of political power which has in the political sphere been largely solved. 
The political analogy should show us that no simple or ready-made 
solution of the problem of property is possible, but may also suggest 
the lines along which a solution is likely to be found. 



Ill 

THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 

The principle of private property partakes in a pecu- 
liar degree of the twofold character of all rights. On ^ 
the one hand, as the words show, it implies a right 
belonging to individuals, and to individuals thought 
of as set over against and excluding one another. Pri- 
vate property is something in which a man can express 
his own individuality and character, and which he can 
prevent other people from using. In a society with , 
a developed system of private property wealth is 
thought of as divided up into separate lots : each mem- 
ber of society has in his property a sphere of his own. 
On the other hand private property, just because it is 
a right, exists only in and through society. Without 
mutual recognition of rights, without respect for law 
and its decisions, property could not go on existing. 
As society develops, the importance of a man's power ' 
to defend himself, of his physical grasp over his pos- 
sessions, becomes less, but private property does not 
diminish but increases. A man's own is what society 
and law allow him, or what they recognize to be his. 
On whatever principle this recognition is based, it is 
by virtue of it that private property exists. Private 
property then, like other rights, is a creation of society, 
yet in the institution of private property society seems 
to be denying its nature and insisting not on the social 
but on the individual and exclusive nature of its mem- 
bers. 

72 



PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 73 

To neglect either of these two aspects of the right 
of property is fatal. For if you take away the recog- 
nition of rights which implies society, property dis- 
appears, and if we wonld vest all property absolutely 
in society as a whole, we should be denying the separate 
existence of individuals. Even the most extreme form 
of Communism must allow a man's property in the 
jfood that he eats. Communism is only an attempt to 
reduce to a minimum the right of private use implied 
mi property. It cannot abolish it altogether. 

These two extremes then need not trouble us. Some 
sort of recognition must be given to the social as to the 
individual character of property. Differences of opin- 
ion as to the place which property ought to occupy in 
society arise from the difficulty of adjusting the claims 
of the solidarity of society on the one hand and the 
independent development of its individual members on 
the other. Some political thinkers would have all in- 
stitutions directed to the encouragement of individual- 
ity and leave the solidarity of society to look after it- 
self. Others take just the reverse view. 

When interest is focussed on the individual, society 
is sometimes looked upon as a system of mechanical 
and external alliances. Property is held to be not 
created though it must be recognized by society. The 
right of property then is thought to have its source in 
the individual regarded not as a member of society but 
as an independent unit. It is the business of society to 
maintain and make effective this right, but it has no 
power to modify it, no control over it. When, however, 
such stress is laid on the fact that society is an organic 
whole that the units composing it are thought incapable 
of independent existence, it is possible to maintain that 
inasmuch as property would not exist without society, 
it is created by the definite act of society to suit its 



ij*" 



74 PEOPERTY 

convenience, and can be for this same reason modified 1 
or destroyed by society at will. We ought not on this i 
view to try to go beyond the existing right. We can- • 
not discuss what rights of property the State should' 
recognize, only what it has recognized or now wills to > 
recognize. 

The classical exposition of the first of these views is 
found in Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Govern- 
ment. It has been described and examined in another 4' 
Essay, and need not detain us here. It seeks to found . 
the right of private property on the principle that a 
man has a right to the wealth which he has himself 
created. The principle is innocent enough, but it will 
not serve the purpose desired of it. It will not sufiice 
to fit the facts. For much private property cannot, 
possibly be described as created by those who own it, 
and, a more fatal objection, wealth is not created out 
of nothing, but by the manipulation of previously exist- 
ing wealth or sources of wealth. If these are privately 
owned, then all members of society have not an equal 
opportunity of creating wealth, and therefore the ap- 
parent justice of the principle that each man should 
own what he has created is illusory. Further, the crea- 1 
tion of wealth is not the work of separate individuals 
working independently, but is a co-operative undertak- 
ing in which in one way or another the whole commu- 
nity takes part. In any society of at all developed eco- 
nomic structure there are almost no articles of value of 
which a man can say, **This I and I alone produced/' 

The theory really implies that individuals produce 
wealth in isolation, and that law and society then rec- 
ognize the position from without. The facts are quite 
otherwise. Men cannot be cut loose from their past, 
and regarded as beginning to produce wealth from what 
has been nothing before, nor as separated from their ' 



PRINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PROPERTY 75 

fellows in the act of production. Society has its part 
in the production as in the recognition of property. 

If society allows each of its members to own prop- 
lerty which is recognized as his and therefore not 
another 's, if it seems to think of the individual with his 
I property as cut off from his fellows, that independence, 
|, the private nature of property, is not based upon the 
I private nature or individuality of the production. The 
I wealth which men possess as property was made by co- 
I operation, the separate contribution to which of each 
I member of society cannot be exactly estimated. Pri- 
vate property is recognized by society not in virtue of 
a right inherent in the individual, but because it is an 
' institution which is thought to be for the good of so- 
I ciety as a whole. 

This does not necessarily mean that private property 
is therefore only the creation of convention. The re- 
placement of the doctrine of absolute natural rights 
inherent in the individual by the doctrine that the 
standard of all rights is the convenience or good of 
society, seems sometimes to imply a justification of 
political opportunism. For the convenience or good of 
society as a whole might be interpreted as the con- 
venience of society at any particular moment, or worse 
still the convenience of an existing government. The 
real service of the doctrine of natural rights was that it 
gave content to the conception of the good of society, 
that it emphasized the truth that the good of society 
can only express itself in the good lives of its individual 
members. We may still then maintain that the prin- 
ciple of private property ought to be recognized by 
society, if we can show that it is an essential condition 
of the good life. And this is the only possible line of 
defence of the principle. 

Here one thing must be said in warning. Other 



76 PEOPERTY 

Essays have shown that the right of private property 
has existed in the most various forms, exists in differ- ; 
ent forms at the present day, and has had the most dif- | 
f erent effects. Yet I have talked so far of the principle i 
or the right of private property as though that were 
something simple and always the same. Any discus- > 
sion then of the part played by the institution of private 
property in society might seem to require a vast his- 
torical enquiry, xmless we can distinguish the principle ^1 
of private property from the various forms in which^ | 
or the varied extent to which, that principle has been 
recognized. ' 

It is possible, I think, to do this by going back to a 
phrase used at the beginning of this paper. In the 
institution of private property society seems to be in- 
sisting on the individual, exclusive nature of its mem- 
bers. We are all members one of another. No man 
liveth to himself or dieth to himself. We are what we 
are through the influences of society. In a very real 
sense it is true that there is nothing of which we can 
say that it is our own because we alone have made it, or - 
because it interests or affects us only. Yet what is 
legally mine is not another's, and I have sharply- 
defined and clear-cut rights over my property. On what 
grounds can such an artificial distinction of man from 
man be justified, and how far ought it to be extended? 

We might begin by attempting to base private prop- 
erty on actual facts. Men in society form an organism \ 
and yet they remain in some respects distinct. We 
cannot separate men in the production of wealth, that 
must always be co-operative; but we obviously can in 
the consumption. A dinner that another man eats is 
no use to me. There are some things which, from the 
necessities of our physical nature, must be used sepa- 
rately. Private property then may be justified if it is 



PEINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PEOPERTY 77 



based on use. Those things are rightly privately 
owned, it will be said, which are necessarily privately 
used, and in so far as they are so used. Such a prin- 
ciple, however, has little to do with the principle of 
private property as commonly understood. Eather, 
it is the principle of Communism. For Communism is 
I an attempt to confine property to use. The community 
j takes over all rights in things that are not being used, 
I and gives to individual members of society only these 
I rights which are coincident with prescribed uses. 
I Private property, as generally understood, implies 
I rights over things when they are not being used, the 
I right to use or refrain from using, the right to allow 
I or to prevent use to others. 

A successful state of Communism would imply that 
all care of property when it was not being used, all 
provision of property in anticipation of its use, and the 
reconciliation of all conflicting claims to the use of the 
same property would be the business of the community. 
The individuals would only have to think what they 
wanted to do, to manifest their needs, and if the com- 
munal organization was adequate, these would be sup- 
plied. Such a system of society is not unthinkable. 
It can easily be realized in a family or in a monastery ; 
but it is a principle very difficult to realize in an ordi- 
nary political society, and it has a serious moral disad- 
vantage. The position of property in anticipation of 
its use could be organized communally only if the uses 
of property remained uniform. Such an organization 
would be hardly compatible with the discovery of new 
uses and needs by the individual members of society. 
Further communal organization can only mean organi- 
zation by some individuals on behalf of the rest, and 
would be possible only where, as hi a family or a mon- 
astery, most members of the community were content 



78 PEOPERTY 

to allow others to arrange their lives for them. If the | 
control over wealth when it is not being used is sepa- | 
rated from the right over it in use, and the former as- ' | 
signed to the commnnity, and the second to the indi- I 
vidnal, the necessity for deliberation and foresight is ; 
taken from the individual. The moral advantage of Ij 
private property over Communism is that it makes the 
private person think of his life as a whole, and realize J 
his responsibility for his actions. Unless we learn that 
if we are reckless now we shall be less able to do what 
we want in the future, and that not for want of the per- i 
mission of others whom we might try to get round, but j 
because of the simple law that you cannot eat your cake ■ 
and have it, we should probably remain children all our j 
lives. We need not go to actual systems of Communism 
to discover that. It is equally apparent in the life of 
those unfortunate sons of very wealthy and foolish 
parents who are sure that they will be given as much 
money as they may want whatever they may do, as in 
those whose livelihood is so insecure that it is not 
worth their while to look ahead. Private property 
enables the individual to develop that power of plan- 
ning and deciding for one's self which is as important 
a factor in the good life of society as the sense of com- 
munity and interdependence. Its ultimate justification 
is the worth of individuality, and the fact that individ- 
uality expresses itself in relation to external goods. 
This point is so familiar and obvious that there is no 
need to labour it. Most people recognize by this time 
of day that the good of society is not helped but hin- 
dered by the elimination of individuality and character 
in its members. 

Opinions differ as to where these considerations 
should lead us. They are often, for example, adduced 
as an argument against Socialism, but private control 



PEINCIPLB OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 79 

over the spending of income is as compatible with 
Socialism as with the existing system of property. The 
Socialist w^onld indeed maintain that under Socialism 

I more people would be in a position to enjoy the advan- 
tages of private property; but Socialism attacks not 

[ private property in general, but private property in the 
means of production; and it might well be contended 
that while spending or consumption should be as indi- 
vidual as possible, the production of wealth is essen- 
tially a co-operative undertaking in which the emphasis 
laid on individuality by private property is disadvan- 
tageous» Any monopoly of the means of production 
can only be harmful. Let us see then what there is 
to be said for private property in the means of pro- 
duction. 

The first point which might be made is that no clear 
line can be drawn between means of production and 
means of consumption, or between capital and income, 
for capital is only created by the income or the 
wealth owned by individuals being set aside or used 
for a particular purpose. We can point to almost 
nothing that is always a means of production or always 
a thing to be consumed. 

This objection is not a fatal one because there is no 
doubt that we can roughly say when wealth is being 
used as capital and when as income. But in it we are 
confronted with a fact about property which is of the 
utmost importance. We often think of property as 
consisting of things. When we insist on the importance 
of property as a means to the expression of individual- 
ity, we think of the importance of a man's possessing 
things that are his own, his own books and pictures, 
his own house and so on. But in a society whose eco- 
nomic organization is at all developed, most property 
consists not in rights to the enjoyment of things, but 



80 PEOPEETY 

in rights to services; the power to make men act in 
certain ways. This power, it may well be contended, 
is as essential a part of what makes individuality in 
life as is the possession of objects. Far more than 
snch possession it makes possible the abuses which are 
the real grounds of attacks on the principle of private 
property. The desire for wealth to consume has after 
all got its limits, the desire for power over other men's 
lives has not. The difficulty of distinguishing between 
property used as a means of production and property 
consumed may be used not only as an argument to 
defend the first because of the virtues of the second, 
but to attack the second because of the vices of the first. 

But something else can be said for private property 
in the means of production. The argument may be 
put in some such way as this. 

It may be true that all productive work is co-opera- 
tive and that, therefore, no wealth is produced by indi- 
viduals in isolation, but it does not follow that the part 
played by different individuals is the same or of equal 
value. Co-operation is the combining of different 
wills and different minds, and all deliberation and con- 
trivance comes originally from individual minds. Effi- 
cient production is only possible if encouragement is 
given to originality and invention in individuals as 
much as to the co-operation between all the members of 
society. It may be true that power over and control 
of other men is liable to abuse, but it is also an essential 
instrument in achieving anything of note in combined 
effort. If private property gives men the power of 
directing others in the work of co-operative production, 
that is no evil but a manifest good if that power is in 
the hands of those who can use it best. Further, while 
it may be true that we cannot divide up wealth into 
parts and say this part was created entirely by this 



PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 81 

man and this by that, it does not follow that we cannot 
estimate the relative importance of the parts played 
by dii^erent men. On the contrary, a man's income 
does ronghly express the value which society puts 
upon his services, and the money a man makes is a fair 
criterion of his capability to use profitably the power 

I over other men's lives which the possession of property 
gives. Such a criterion may not be infallible. No doubt 
it is not, but it is a better criterion than any other which 
can be substituted for it. The principle of private 
property in the means of production is but the carry- 

[ mg out of the principle *Hools to those who can use 

; them,'' and that surely is a principle conceived- k the 
interests not primarily of the individual but of society. 

i In this argument there is much truth, in so far as it is 
an argument, that individuality in the production of 
wealth is for the good of society as well as individuality 
in the spending of it, and must be made possible under 
any system of property. But it does not follow that 
such individuality is best realized under the existing 
system of private property. Against that particular 
conclusion the following considerations may be urged. 
1. Such arguments would not justify the rights of 
bequest or inheritance. It may be that the power of 
bequest in some form is a necessary incentive to effort. 
It is also true that the solidarity of the family which 
the right of inheritance encourages, though the right 
of bequest does not, is for the good of society. Never- 
theless in themselves these rights go against the prin- 
ciple of tools to those who can use them, in as much as 
they put great power into the hands of those whose 
only claim to it is that they are the natural or chosen 
heirs of those who have shown the capability of using 
it. Any defense of these rights must ultimately be 
based upon a recognition of the importance and value 



82 PKOPEETY 

of the existence of associations within the State inter- 
mediate between the State and the individual, such as 
the family or what are called voluntary associations. 
The attempt to enforce rigidly the principle of tools 
to those who can use them or money to him who has 
earned it, and to give all else to the State would deny 
the value of all such lesser bonds and communities. 

4 The permanence of the family has a social value which 
the right of inheritance helps to maintain. The prac- 
tice of charitable bequest led at an early date to the 
recognition by law that there are certain purposes 
which may well be made more permanent than the lives 
of the individuals who serve them, and which are 
therefore allowed to own property and regarded in- 
deed as in some sense persons. How far the rights of 
property vested in corporations should be the same 
as those vested in individuals is a subject of too great 
complexity to be entered into here. For our present 
purpose it is enough to note that it cannot be solved 
by the application of any simple rule. It demands the \ 
adjustment of various interests, each having a value ' 
of its own. The problem of the position of voluntary ! 
associations in the State is one with a long history 
behind it, and the powers of such associations to hold 
and inherit property has played a large part in that 
history. How to preserve the variety and initiative 1 
which the existence of such associations makes possible 
consistently with maintaining the stability of the whole 

^^ State and the freedom of individual members of each 
association and of the State, is perhaps the most diffi- 
cult of political problems which confronts us to-day, ^ 
and one of which there is certainly no final solution. As 
little can there be any final settlement of the rights of 
property which are connected with it. 
2. To return to the argument that the existing sys- 



PEINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PEOPERTY 83 

tern of private property is based on the principle of 
tools to those who can use them, exceptions having been 
now made of the rights of inheritance and of bequest, 
it is clear on consideration that the amount of money 
earned in any undertaking is obviously only a very 
\ rough test of its public utility. There are some ways 
I of making money, e.g. the promotion of lotteries or 
j gambling, which the State definitely forbids, thereby 
I claiming that the collective verdict of the community 
may override what may be called the economic verdict 
expressed in the fact that so many individual people 
j are prepared to pay money to the promoters of lotter- 
ies. The same principle is implied in the special taxa- 
tion on lotteries in countries where they are permitted, 
' or on the drink traffic. It is also implied in the State 
endowment of research or education. It is there recog- 
nized that research has a value to the community which 
is not recognized in the value given to it in the open 
market. For it is something which pays in the long run 
but perhaps pays no individual immediately. This is 
expressed in the common phrase **the State or a cor- 
poration can afford to wait for its money.'' The com- 
munity's judgments of value can take in a wider range 
of circumstances, and take thought for a longer period 
of time, than the judgments of value expressed in the 
economic preferences of individuals. Even so the argu- 
ment from money earned to public service rendered 
would only hold of a system of perfectly free competi- 
tion. Actually it is vitiated wherever monopoly exists. 
3. While it is true that the power given to individ- 
uals by private property tends to efficiency when 
rightly used, that does not remove the evils produced 
by the irresponsible power thus acquired with prop- 
erty. It may be the case that as yet no means have 
been devised which can prevent these evils without also 



84 PROPERTY 

taking away the advantages of private property, and 
that they are a price which is worth paying. On that 
point opinions will differ. But obviously it would be 
desirable if the efficiency produced by the encourage- 
ment of individual initiative and the entrusting of 
power into the hands of individuals were combined with 
some means of preventing that power being abused^ 
with some method of enforcing responsibility. Even 
if we hold, as some do, that to encourage in individuals 
possessing property a sense of this responsibility is all 
we can compass at present, we need not give up hope of 
contriving something better in the future. 

Here we have the analogy of the control of political 
power to encourage us. Indeed once we realize that 
property exists mainly as power, we can see that the 

^ problem of the proper regulation of property is only 
the old political problem of the recognition and control 
of political power in a vastly more complicated form. 
The same difficulty of combining the efficiency which 
is given by the concentration of power with the preven- 
tion of its abuse and the insistence that such power 
shall be used for social and not for anti-social ends, has 
been realized and to some extent solved in the political 
sphere. The pressing need for strong and efficient 
government in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies made writers like Hobbes treat political 
power as the absolute property of the sovereign, and 
denounce any attempts to limit such power or make 
it responsible as fatal to the efficiency of government. 
Means of combining efficiency with popular control 

\ have been evolved but slowly ; no ready-made or simple 
solution could possibly have been found ; it needed the 
political experience of generations to achieve a system 
of responsible government. At first the possibility of 
good government depended on individual rulers choos- 



PEINCIPLE OF PEIVATE PEOPERTY 85 

ing to act as though they were responsible to their 
people. Bnt there has grown up such a system of gov- 
ernment as makes the irresponsible use of political 
power difficult if not impossible. 

The problem of combining the free use of power and 
individual initiative with their control in the interest 
of society, of giving scope and yet preventing the evils 
arising from irresponsibility, will probably be much 
more difficult in the sphere of economic production than 
in that of government for various reasons. (1) The ^ 
problem has been solved in the political sphere only 
by a strict limitation, in the early stages of the solu- 
tion at least, of that sphere. The power given by prop- 
erty extends to every corner of social life, and is in- 
finitely more indeterminate and fluid than political 
power. (2) The problem has to be solved without des- 
troying private property in the means of expenditure 
and consumption, and it is not easy to draw the line 
between the two forms of property more than roughly. 
(3) Initiative and inventiveness are more important in 
the economic than in the political sphere, and regu- 
lation of economic will have to be more elastic than 
regulation of political power. 

We may be confident that no simple ready-made solu- 
tion of it will be found. But that is no reason for sup- 
posing that the task is impossible or that the present 
makeshift system is the only one that is possible. 
Without being able at this moment completely to work 
out a better system we may be able to see the direction 
in which development is desirable. In the meantime, 
if we realize that the existing institution of private 
property is not based on absolute right and has no ^ 
absolute but only a partial justification, in that while 
it makes for the good life of men in society it does so at 
a considerable cost, we may see that the system will be 



86 PROPERTY 

tolerable only if the possessors of property act as the 
good sovereign of earlier times acted — as though, that, 
is, they were under obligations which law is not yet 
able or does not think it convenient to enforce. 



IV 



THE BIBLICAL AND EAKLY 
CHEISTIAN IDEA OF PEOPERTY 

BY 

The Rev. VERNON BARTLET, D.D. (St. Andrews) 

PBOFESSOB OF CHUBCH HISTOBY IN MANSFIELD COLIJEGE, OXFOBD 



SUMMARY 

The discussion limited for practical reasons to one specific type of 
religion, the Biblical and Early Christian. 

Here the religious view of Humanity is determinative of property. 

I. Old Testament religion: its genius and social implications, as 
realized at various periods in Israel's history. 

The principles of social justice emphasized by the Hebrew Prophets, 
both earlier and later, and in its own way by post-Exilic Judaism 
generally. 

The prophetic ideal re-emerges in full power in John the Baptist and 
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

II. New Testament religion: the fundamentally social nature of 
Jesus's Grospel of the Kingdom of God on earth, as based on the Divine 
Fatherhood. Here the ideas of Divine "stewardship" for all a man 
holds, and of the rightful use of property as relative to the welfare of 
persons, attain fresh depth, emphasis, and range. Such use of prop- 
erty a test of loyalty to the Heavenly Father and His Will for men. 

This felt from the first, but applied in various ways according to 
current ideals of human need. 

The "communistic" temper of the Primitive Church, on a voluntary 
basis of Christian Love, in the New Testament and in sub-apostolic 
writings. The Preaching of Peter afi'ords a locxis classicus for the early 
second century and for the ante-Nicene ideal generally. The Church's 
sensitiveness to morally dubious trades, and especially usury. 

First explicit discussion of property (to the point of riches) in 
Clement of Alexandria early in the third century. It continues the 
old tradition, seen also in Tertullian and Cyprian, but adds some more 
modern considerations. 

Lactantius, early in the fourth century, the next exponent of the 
Christian theory of property, which he treats in the light of Justice 
and Humanity. 

Certain limitations under which the positive Christian idea of prop- 
erty operated within the Roman Empire, first as pagan, then as ofiioiaily 
Christian. These due to the time-limitation of the Advent Hope, the 
Church's earlier status as a small minority, and the genius of the 
Gospel as primarily spiritual in its interest. 

Hence (a) toleration of slavery as an institution, and (5) "other 
worldly" asceticism. As the foreshortened perspective of the Kingdom 
of God on earth was outgrown by experience, the existing social order 
assumed a more positive significance as something to be leavened by 
Christian principles, especially after Constantine's conversion. But the 
Church's grasp on Christian principle in this sphere was no longer 
such as to make it take full advantage of the new opportunity, which 
was largely lost. Thus the idea of property really remained pagan and 
Roman rather than Christian. The fact is that the Church's idea of 
the Gospel had itself changed in emphasis. The idea of "retreat" from ^ 
the world now widespread: the morally aggressive power of "faith" 
impaired: the negative aspect of Monasticism and of the Augustinian / 
doctrine of Original Sin. ' 

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" an ideal largely lost 
since early days; is now being realized as never before. 

Responsibility the note of the religious idea of property, especially 
in Christianity, which lays such stress on the value of persons as 
compared with things. Between the competing interests of persons, 
God is the Great Arbiter as regards just use of His gifts of property. 

88 



IV 

THE BIBLICAL AND EARLY 
CHRISTIAN IDEA OF PROPERTY 

Our subject is the religious idea of property as trace- 
able in the Bible and in the Early Christian Church. 
Such limitation of treatment as this involves is dictated 
by practical considerations. It seems best to concen- 
trate attention on that part of the whole subject which 
has most direct bearing on the form in which the idea 
of property exists to-day in most minds of the Euro- 
pean type of culture. For our present purpose, then, 
the significance of religion generally for the idea of 
property may best be studied under the specific forms 
of that religion which has so largely moulded Euro- 
pean society and our own attitude to its institutions. 
Every civilization has at its heart its own idea of 
Humanity, which, in the last resort, controls its social 
thought and practice. Through all varieties of this 
idea certain broad distinctions run. Society may be 
viewed primarily as a community, the general well- 
being of which is all in all, or on the other hand as 
made up of individuals, the particular well-being of 
whom is of prime importance. Further, on either view 
humanity may be viewed on a materialistic basis, as 
having its sole ground in Nature in the same way as all 
else known to our senses ; or again, on a spiritualistic 
basis, as having its real meaning, and therefore its 
ultimate motives of social conduct, in relation to some- 

89 



90 PEOPERTY 

thing above Nature, to some Being akin to, and the 
proper source of, the highest element in us. Now it is 
obvious that, according as one or other of these concep- 
tions of persons and their destiny prevails, it must 
profoundly affect both theory and practice as to the 
distribution and use of the things through which 
persons find more or less scope for self-realization, 
that is, touching property in its widest sense. This 
being so, it cannot but be that the religious view of 
humanity must contribute a factor of profound and 
indeed decisive import to the working idea of property, 
so far as religion is a real thing to those who profess it. 
Religion is in principle all or nothing: by its fruits 
it is known one way or another. True, what once had 
ethical meaning may be narrowed down to mere sacred 
ritual or custom, with no conscious relations to living 
conduct, individual or social. But this is simple lapse 
into unreality as regards one aspect, and in all higher 
faiths the primary aspect, of the full fact of religion, 
which is in idea coextensive with the whole life of 
personal responsibility. The religion of the Bible at 
least, and of the Early Church, was for the most part 
really effective in moulding men's social ideals and 
conduct; and we shall now trace in outline the idea 
of property which underlay the historical develop- 
ment of such religion. 



In Old and New Testament alike the idea of God 
ruled human life in all its relations. At all stages of 
Israel's history we find the sense of social duties as 
having their chief sanction in the Divine Being with 
whose sovereign rights each Israelite felt himself face 
to face, in virtue of the Covenant relation on which 
the national existence was based. Further, at a certain 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPEETY 91 

stage, visible for instance in Is. xl. ff., there emerges a 
clear consciousness of the God of Israel as the Creator 
and Upholder of all things. In this character He 
possesses absolute rights to the allegiance of all men, 
and not only of His Chosen People, in soul, body, 
and goods of every sort. All these things, powers of 
mind and body as well as material possessions, are held 
in stewardship for God, and for His ends in creating 
manldnd to show forth and share His *' glory" or 
manifested nature. It was relative to this outlook on 
the world, and on life in society, that property was 
conceived of in Hebrew religion ; and it can readily be 
imagined how powerful an incentive to social justice 
and to social reform, as ideals grew in range and 
purity such a conception would present to truly relig- 
ious minds in Israel. 

Let us recall some of the leading expressions of Old 
Testament religion bearing on the matter in hand. ^*In 
the beginning God created" the earth and all upon it, 
and finally man as the crown of His purposes on earth. 
Man, then, was created as God's vice-gerent over the 
lower creation, as being **made in the image of God," 
or as Psalm viii. has it, **but little lower than Deity" 
{Elohim)j in respect of his latent capacities, insignifi- 
cant though man is on his material side. Accordingly 
David is described as addressing God as follows, in 
connection with the offerings of Israel for the building 
of the Temple (1 Chron. xxix.) : 

Thine, Lord, is the greatness*, and the power . . . and the 
majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is 
thine; thine is the kingdom (sovereignty), Lord, and thou 
art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honour come 
of thee, and thou rulest over all; and in thine hand it is to 
make great, and to give strength unto aU. . . . But who am 
I, and what is my people, that we should he able to offer so 



92 PEOPERTY j 

i 
willingly after this sort! for all things come of thee, and ofEj 
thine own have we given thee. ... Lord our God, all this; 

store . . . Cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own I 

Lord, the God of our fathers, keep this for ever in thes' 
imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and 
establish their heart unto thee. 

Here we have a perfect expression of the genuine He- 
brew view of hnman property — all that a man can call 
his own and control — ^as verily the gift of God, to be 
held before all else in trust for the Giver's own uses, - 
for the realization of His kingdom or manifested sov- 
ereignty on earth. Such rights, then, as any man can 
have in anything he possesses — his faculties of body 
and mind, lands and all in or upon them, and what is 
** produced" (by God's power and bounty) as result 
of human faculty applied to the resources of Nature — 
such ** property" rights are purely relative, derivative, 
conditional, in the presence of God's sovereign over- 
lordship of all He has produced, and is still producing, 
through the subordinate agencies of Nature and man. 
None on earth has absolute or indefeasible rights, but 
all only in so far as they fulfil the terms of the steward- 
ship entrusted to them by God and the duties to others 
which flow therefrom. This applies alike to nations 
and to individuals. But the Divine mil for and in the 
larger unit of its purposes must be regulative of the 
same will for and in the smaller unit of humanity, so 
that the rights of the latter are relative to those of the 
former as a whole. In other words, the general or 
national welfare is prior to and determinative of that 
of the individual in the Divine order, and so by right. 
To this conception of property, its duties and rights, 
the general trend of the Old Testament data broadly 
and normally conforms; and there are constant signs 
of a tendency to reform actual conditions, when these 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 93 

seem to diverge intolerably from the Divine ideal. The 
various forms of the Mosaic legislation found in the 
different codes embodied in the Pentateuch illustrate 
this tendency.^ We can see the process of social reform 
going on before our eyes, and realize the religious 
motives which animated reformers, in the pages of the 
Hebrew Prophets. The occasion of their utterances 
was the great change for the worse in economic con- 
ditions—away from a relatively equal ownership of 
land — which was due partly to losses from foreign in- 
vasion, plunging the poor into debt to the richer mem- 
bers of the community, and partly to the new factor of 
commerce fostered by foreign intercourse. In these 
and other ways the sacred bond between the family and 
the land — conceived to belong to the nation's God and 
to have been given by Him to all Israelites to enjoy in 
essential equality for ever — ^was broken. There arose 
a landless and dependent class, sometimes to the point 
of enslavement of Israelite to Israelite. This last was 
an abomination in the eyes of all save those who them- 
selves made property of their fellows. But even the 
lesser abuse, as a virtual negation of the idea of broth- 
erhood before God, the real owner of the land and of 
all its increase, stirred prophets like Amos, Hosea, 
Isaiah, and Micah to witness that social justice is of the 
essence of true religion. Their constant language is of 
the ** oppression" of the weak by the strong, as when 
social and economic advantages were used to increase 
any accidental inequality in the distribution of material 
goods, and this often under the forms of law and jus- 
tice. ** Jehovah will enter into judgment with the 
eiders and princes of his people. It is ye that have 
eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your 

iSee Dr. W. H. Bennett's Essay in Christ and CiviUzation (1910), 
pussirti. 



94 PEOPEETY 

houses. What mean ye that ye crush my people, and 
grind the face of the poor? This is the oracle of the 
Lord.'' Or again, ^*Woe unto those who join house to 
house, who add field to field, till there is no more room, 
and ye are settled alone in the midst of the land. "^ 
Here what is chiefly condemned **is really the iniqui- 
tous distribution of the gain and loss arising out of 
the social changes" of the period: '^the profit mainly 
falls to a limited class . . . callous, self-seeking, and 
self-indulgent, and deepens their moral deterioration; 
while the loss is borne by the poor and helpless.''^ 
Over against such injustice and oppression, flowing 
from self-seeking use of economic power, the prophets 
place the outraged Justice of the all-sovereign King of 
Israel, who is the one real Owner of the land and of 
its produce, and whose prime concern in its use is the 
well-being of all His People. Any other use of it is 
sacrilege, simply robbing God. This is the idea under- 
lying the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee. The 
former provided for the poor from the land as it lay 
fallow in the seventh year (Ex. xxiii. 10 f.), as well as 
for the release of the Hebrew from bondservice (Ex. 
xxi. 2 ff., Deut. xv. 12 ff.), or from debts (Deut. xv. 1 
ff.). By the latter Leviticus makes similar provision 
for the recovery of ^ liberty throughout the land," for 
all Hebrews, at the longer interval of fifty years. As 
regards land, it all reverts to its original owners (xxv. 
10) ; it ^* shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land 
is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me" 
{v. 23). As to bondservice, even in the modified form 
of hired service, which alone Leviticus allows, it too 
then ceases; *^for unto Me the children of Israel are 
servants ... I am the Lord your God" {v. 55; cf. 42). 

2 Isaiah iii. 14 f., v. 8; cf. i. 17. ' 

3 Bennett (as above), p. 60. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PROPERTY 95 

Both of these ordinances, then, in theory at least, recog- 
: nize in a striking and radical way the sovereign rights 
of Jehovah as the Overlord, as it were, of the theo- 
cratic Feudal System of Israel, and the supreme value 
of persons over property in His eyes. It is in this light 
that the Eighth Commandment must be read. So 
viewed, it tells against all accumulation of land and 
wealth as ** private property'' which affects inequitably 
and oppressively the opportunities and welfare of men 
and women, as God's own special property. 

If the later prophets, a Jeremiah or an Ezekiel, 
when face to face with a disintegrated Israel, **feel 
that a true social organism can be created only out of 
true individual members, they never abandon the idea 
of founding a new social organism. Individualism is 
but the necessary stage towards this," by creating 
more responsible moral units.* While trying to lay the 
foundations of religion more deeply in the individual 
conscience, and on God's Covenant in the heart, they 
do not forget the cause of social justice. They, too, 
echo in effect^ Micah's memorable words (vi^ 8) : **He 
hath showed thee, man, what is good ; and 'what doth 
Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk hmnbly with thy God I" Here we 
have the very essence of prophetic religion, social 
justice and mercy, rooted in an abiding sense of God's 
eye upon all a man's ways. It is the exact opposite of 
the attitude in which one claims a right *'to do as one 
pleases with his own property." The decisive ques- 
tion for a man who '* walks humbly with his God" 
would be, '^Lord, what would 'st Thou have me to do 
with Thine own ? ' ' By whatsoever means it has come 

4 Dr. A. B. Davidson, article "Prophecy" in Hastings's Diet, of the 
Bihle, vol. iv. 

5 Jer. vii. 6, xxii. 3, 13, xxxiv. 8-22 ; Ezek. xviii. 8, xxxii. 7 1, 29, 
xxxiv. 8, 17 ff., xlvi. 18. 



96 PROPERTY 

to him, it still has come from God, and remains by right 
under His control.^ 

Even after the Exile, one great act of reparation 
seems to have been achieved by Nehemiah,^ when by 
moral suasion he induced the wealthy to restore lands 
and houses to expropriated poorer brethren. The post- 
Exilic prophets^ still breathe much of the old spirit: 
**The fast is worthless when the worshipper oppresses 
his labourers; the true fast is to loose the bonds of 
wickedness and let the oppressed go free, to feed the 
hungry, to house the outcast, and to clothe the naked'' 
(Is. Iviii. 3-8). And the witness of the Wisdom 
writings is to like effect,^ notably in Job 's picture of the 
righteous man (xxix., cf. xxxi.). Yet here the old 
prophetic insistence on the *^ justice" which goes to the 
root of social evils by enabling men to remain self- 
supporting, has already dwindled to praise of the 
* 'mercy, " which tries to cope with the resulting dis- 
tress. The latter is relative to the religious ideal of a 
society too individualistic to feel the divine discontent 
of the older prophecy, though it kept on turning out the 
extremes of need and superfluity. If a pious soul here 
and there prayed, like Agur (Prov. xxx. 8 f.), for the 
happy mean between poverty and riches, it was for its 
own spiritual welfare, and not as the condition of a like 
lot falling to others also, which is the moral principle 
and test of a true social order. *^ Under the abnormal 
conditions of foreign domination, religion had grown 
narrower and feebler, when it was forced back frorii 
the great national and human interests into an ecclesi- 

ePs. xxiv. 1; Job xli. 11. 

7 Nehemiah v. 

8 Dr. Bennett specifies, e.y., Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii., Ivi.-lxvi., Haggai, 
Zechariah, Malaehi, Joel. 

8 Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Canon, while the 
Apocrypha is here in full agreement. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 97 

astical habit of mind. ... It became legal, fixed, mo- ^ 
notonous, a thing by itself. . . . The prophetic voice 
was hushed and the prophetic fire died ont."^° Yet 
there is evidence even in the later post-Exilic Judaism 
that the old ideal of social righteousness remained for 
many in Israel the essential test of piety. Thus, in 
Malachi iii. 5, Jehovah warns, * ' I will come near to you 
in judgment" — the setting right of what is wrong — 
*^ against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, 
the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the 
stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord 
of Hosts." Here we get the social ideal in the setting 
most characteristic of the last centuries of the nation's 
corporate life, viz. as projected into the future, the 
Messianic age, w^hen by a great divine intervention in 
history God shall vindicate in the eyes of all His ideal 
of human society. This vindication is usually depicted 
as achieved through a personal representative of God. 
Marked by a spirit of ^^righteousness and lowliness "^^ 
— once the sifting judgment is past — ^he shall do away 
with unjust and oppressive riches on the one hand, and 
dependent and hungry poverty on the other. This is 
evactly the note of the Messianic Hope in the Mag- 
nificat,^^ which is most significant in the present con- 
nexion as showing the true line of continuity from Old 
Testament religion to that of the New Testament. That 
line first emerges quite clearly in the great prophets, 
whose teaching as to property in a religious light has 
just been summarized. Its presence later on is made 
manifest in John the Baptist, whose strongly social 
message echoes in his replies to various classes as to 
a true repentance,^^ and whose spirit is emphatically 

low. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (pp. 27-32). 

11 Zech, ix. 9 ; Ps. xlv. 4 ; Test, of Judah, xxiv. 1 ; Psalms of Solomon, 
xvii., xviii. 

12 Luke i. 46-55. is Luke iii. 10-14. 



98 PROPERTY 

sanctioned by Jesus Himself. It is a serious error toi 
overlook this, and to imagine that He who claimed to] 
fulfil **the Law and the Prophets" intended, by his 
new emphasis on the worth of even the humblest indi- 
vidual man or woman, to supersede, rather than inten- 
sify in its moral and religious sanctions, the teaching 
of the prophets as to social justice and equity. 

n 

We have dwelt thus long on the Old Testament 
phase of the Biblical idea of property, because from 
the nature of the case such an idea comes out more 
fully in the national story there unfolded than in the 
New Testament writings. In particular the teaching 
of the Founder of Christianity Himself, owing to its 
very genius and historical setting,^* does not furnish 
much explicit reference to the subject. Yet it has a 
vital bearing on property in its religious and ethical 
asiDects. The Kingdom of God, the reign of the Divine 
Will in and through men on earth, is a conception fun- 
damentally social, and casts light upon the principles 
underlying every social institution. Hence just as 
Jesus confirms certain elements in Old Testament or 
Jewish religion, and supersedes others as untrue to its 
deeper tendency, as well as inadequate to the idea of 
God's Fatherhood which He made determinative of 
everything; so is it with property in the light of the 
same idea, even if He does not draw forth all that is 
here implied. Certainly that detachment of a man's 
heart from all material wealth which He so solemnly 

1* For our present purpose the historical and temporal perspective of 
Christ's message of "the Kingdom" as "at hand," is immaterial,, save in 
so far as it helps to explain why the Gospel at first had nothing to say 
directly as to social reform. The social principles involved are intrinsic 
to the relations of men to God and to each other, whatever the scale of 
time or space to which they may be applied. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PBOPEETY 99 

inculcates, and that love for one's neighbour as for 
Due's self which He makes central in true religion, 
[iiike rebuke all self-assertive claims for ^Hhe rights of 
jproperty," as if of absolute validity. The Old Testa- 
•ment doctrine that all a man has, whether of material 
3r spiritual wealth, he holds as God's property and on 
trust for His uses, is assumed and enforced with new 
smphasis. ^* Mammon" or material wealth is entrusted 
to a mean's stewardship in order to test whether he will 
be **faithful in that which is least," and so be fit to 
iiave entrusted to him *Hhe true riches" of the soul. 
•'But if ye have not been faithful in that which is 
Another's, who will give you that which is your own" 
—that is, those possessions which can be made one's 
OY\Ti by the real appropriation of the spirit, to which 
tliey are akin. Further, as regards God's uses for what 
He entrusts to a man's stewardship, they are simply 
the service of human need for the love of God. This is 
tantamount to ministering to Christ, the Father's 
special representative — a truth set forth with special 
solemnity in the picture of the Final Judgment in 
Matthew xxv. 31-46. Persons, then, being God's one 
real concern, and their welfare being the end for which 
everything which can become human property exists 
and is held in trust from God, all life becomes a prov- 
ing of loyalty and love to Him through loyal love to 
one's brother man.^^ 

*^Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, or thou 
deniest both his sonship to God and thine own"; that 
is the message of the Gospel for all social relations. 
This of course includes implicitly economic relations, 
as affecting the well-being of men, and so the degree 
to which property may be held or increased, where the 
wealth of one lessens the opportunity of others. While 

15 Luke xvi. 10-12; cf. ix. 18. 



100 PEOPERTY 

accepting the institution of private property as a con- 
dition of social life, Christianity changed the whole 
perspective and emphasis of men's thoughts about it, 
and, what is still more difficult, their instinctive feelings 
towards it, by teaching the incomparable value of man- 
hood. In the light of Christ 's idea of humanity, viewed 
in and through the high and indeed divine possibilities 
latent even in those of least account with their fellows, 
property underwent a radical transvaluation. If the 
Sabbath, a divine institution for the training of human 
life, was yet **made for man,'' was relative to his well- 
being, and not vice versa j how much more so property I 
Property had no rights that were not relative to this 
great law of human life, that everything is to be judged 
as having the sanction of God only so far as it sub- 
serves, or at least does not stand in the way of, the 
Divine idea of man as a being created for spiritual like- 
ness to Himself. To this end of ends for man all else 
must be treated but as means. Thus every institution 
of society is to be regarded as liable to modification as 
in practice it fails to work in such a way as to respect 
the sovereign rights of God in humanity, as His chief 
handiwork and property, and that for which, as poten- 
tial sharer in His own nature and glory, all else was 
created. 

These corollaries of the central Christian duty, love 
to God and to man in the light of God's interest in him 
— love with the mind and conscience as well as with the 
feelings — were no doubt felt at once, so morally obvi- 
ous are they. Yet they would be felt in various degrees 
of urgency, as their practical bearings were patent or 
required more reflection in order to be realized. The 
Master Himself had not dealt directly with economic 
conditions but only with moral disposition as deter- 
mining the use of these. All, then, that was at once 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 101 

realized was the duty, or rather privilege, of ** charity," 

in the restricted sense of that term, the divine obliga- 

j tion to share one's goods with those in actual need of 

I bodily necessities, even to the point of impoverishing 

! one's self in fulfilment of the law of Christ. ^*As ye 

, would that men should do unto you, do ye also so unto 

them." There was no compulsion to sacrifice one's 

property at a stroke or to any given point ; only, such 

conduct was highly honoured, as in the case of Barna- 

I bas. What did become a part of the ordinary Chris- 

I tian's ideal, and often of his practice, was the habit of 

treating his goods as not his very own, but as held in 

trust for the brethren in proportion to their need. 

j *^None said that aught of the things which he possessed 

I was his own"; and in that sense ^Hhey had all things 

\ in common. ' ' 

So says Aets;^® and the idea is echoed in the early 
^Catechism called The Ttvo Ways, which adds, *'For if 
iwe are fellow- sharers in that which is imperishable, 
I how much more in things perishable!" Here we 
I have the authentic note of primitive Christian faith; 
I and indeed it is a timeless conviction of Christian faith 
worthy the name. For **w}ioso hath the world's goods, 
and beholdest his brother in need, and shutteth up his 
compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide 
in himf" (1 John iii. 17). The only point at which 
hesitation might arise, and where it did arise during 
i the early centuries, as in later times, was as to the best 
form in which this spirit of boundless goodwill (the 
■social equivalent of Christian love) should act in any 
given state of society — especially outside the special 
; bonds and guarantees of actual Christian brotherhood. 
[Here indeed there has been great variety in practice. 
But as to the essential Christian attitude there can be 

16 Acts iv. 32; cf. ii. 44 f. 



102 PKOPERTY i 

no change without virtual repudiation of discipleship 
to Christ Himself, let alone primitive practice. Two 
things are axiomatic; first the incomparable value of 
persons as compared with property; and next the 
purely relative property-rights of any individual, not 
only as compared with God's absolute rights as Pro- 
ducer and Owner both of all things and of all persons, 
but also as compared with the paramount human or 
derivative rights of Society as representing the com- 
mon weal. Of this, the individual's weal is only a 
dependent part, and should be limited by the rights of 
all others to the conditions of personal well-being. 

The resulting practical principle, viz. the steward- , 
ship of property on behalf both of God and of Society, 
and the moral duty of fidelity in this relation as the 
condition of any correlative rights of private personal 
enjoyment, is too deeply embedded in Christ's teaching, 
notably in the parables, to need demonstration. But 
how thoroughly St. Paul, too, grasped this principle in 
all its range, applying it not only to material but also 
to spiritual possessions, may be seen from his search- 
ing words to certain at Corinth" who prided them- 
selves on their mental superiority. *'For who maketh 
thee to excel? And what hast thou that thou hast not 
received? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou 
glory as if thou hadst not received it?" Everything is 
a gift of God's bounty, and calls for a grateful steward- 
ship of love, the primary objects of which are the 
brethren, and beyond them all in need. As a manual of 
the next generation,^^ a sort of *^ Whole Duty of the 
Christian Man," puts it: **For the Father wills that 
to all there be given from His own gracious gifts."' 
The real danger, in the case of the more earnest souls,, 

17 1 Cor. iv. 7. 

18 The Teaching of the Apostles, i. 5. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PROPERTY 103 

was a too indiscriminate charity to every applicant in 
the guise of need, particularly where the Jewish notion 
was adopted that alms had an atoning virtue (cf. iv. 
6-7). But apart from abuses in both directions, in the 
motives of receiver and giver, self-sacrificing benefi- 
cence towards every form of need, inspired by an 
** enthusiasm of humanity," such as Ecce Homo de- 
scribes as likely to be evoked by Christ's teaching and 
His own attitude to men, marked the Christianity of 
the early centuries and moulded its whole attitude to 
property. 

Most typical is the terse statement in The Preaching 
of Peter a summary of Christian teaching probably be- 
longing to the first half of the second century: **Rich 
is that man who pities many, and in imitation of God 
bestows from what he hath : for God giveth all things 
to all from His own creatures. Understand, then, ye 
rich, that ye are in duty bound to do service, having 
received more than ye yourselves need. Learn that 
to others is lacking that wherein you superabound. Be 
ashamed of holding fast what belongs to others. Imi- 
tate God's equity, and none shall be poor." This long 
remained a locus classicus for the Christian idea 
yl property. Gregory of Nazianzus,^^ for instance, 
towards the end of the fourth century, cites its closing 
sentences, with the preface: '*Let us not be bad stew^- 
ards of what has been given to us. "Similarly in an earn- 
est call to truer living issued by a Christian prophet 
before the middle of the second century, we read: 
' * Every man ought to be rescued from misfortune ; for 
he that hath need and suffereth misfortune in his daily 
life is in great distress and necessity," and ^^ suffers 
[ike torment with one in bonds." Such men, in fact, 

is Oration xiv. In Orat. xvi. 18, he denounces as "most unjust of all," 
biie man who keeps to himself "much property unexpectedly gained." 



104 PEOPERTY j 

are often driven to desperation : hence, to know and not 
to rescue them is to be gnilty of their blood.^° Or^ 
again :^^ ** Instead, then, of fields buy ye souls in dis- 
tress, as one is able, and protect widows and orphans. 
. . . For to this end the Sovereign Master enriched 
you, that ye might perform these services for Him.'^ 
For the Christian to do otherwise is to ** repudiate,'' 
for the sake of earthly possessions, **the law of his own ( 
city," i.e. brotherly love, and follow **the law of the 
city" (the world), viz. selfishness. For himself he 
should seek to provide no more than a modest suf~' 
ficiency. 

The tone of the Apologists of the second century is ^ 
the same. There is no thought of individual rights ' 
making a truly Christian use of property optional or 
voluntary, rather than obligatory, on the lines just 
indicated: for ** wherein any can do good to his neigh- 
bours and does it not, he shall be reckoned alien to 
the Lord's love," i.e. the Christian law of life.^^ 

Further, the ancient Church was very sensitive about 
morally doubtful trades,-^ and refused to receive for , 
God's service, especially the relief of the poor and ' 
needy conceived of as God's special ** altar" for ac- 
ceptable sacrifices, anything made from such sources, 
or to accept as members those who persisted in such 
trades. Among forms of tainted money the Church 
reckoned usury, mainly having in mind the poorer class 4\ 
of borrower in time of distress,^* who could ill afford I 
to pay the high current rate of interest, and often fell 

20 The Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude X. iv. 2 f. 

21 Simil. I. 5-8; cf. Mandate viii. 10, and the parallels adduced in 
Harnack's note in his Patrum Apost. Opei'a. 

22 Irenaeus, Frag. 10, in Harvey's edition, ii. 477. 

23 The Apostolic Didascalia, iv. 5-6 (^Apost. Const, iv. 6), the CaTuins ' 
of Hippolytus, xi. fif. and parallel documents. 

24 Cf. Gregory Naz., Oration xvi. 18, "Farming not the land but the * 
necessity of the needy." 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 105 

as a debtor into the power of the lender. The lending 
of business capital on terms offering good chances of 
repayment was not in question. In the matter of usury, 
then, we get a good instance of the way in which the 
Christian conscience placed the use of property under 
the control of the law of justice that is also sympathy. 
So far we have summarized the incidental teaching 
of the Early Church generally as to the duties of prop- 
erty. But there are a few writers who deal with the 
subject more particularly. The most careful handling 
of the subject of riches— primarily indeed in relation 
to their possessor's true welfare — from an Early 
Christian standpoint, is a tractate of Clement of Alex- 
andria early in the third century. It is entitled **Who 
is the Rich Man that is saved! ^' in allusion to Christ's 
reply to the man who asked ^^Wliat shall I do that I 
may inherit eternal lifef — *^How hardly shall they 
that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. ' ' These 
words deeply impressed the Early Church. Indeed 
Clement found it needful, even after the lapse of 
nearly two centuries, to explain that they did not shut 
out rich men as such from eternal life, any more than 
they guaranteed it to poor men as such. Yet he does 
not disguise the grave difficulties which beset the rich 
man in the path of eternal life. He enters on the 
Christian race severely handicapped with the weight 
of earthly wealth ; yet need he not give up the idea of 
entering at all, only he must submit to the strictest 
training of all under Christ the great trainer (ch. iii.). 
Everything depends on the motive, the attitude of will, 
*Hhe stripping from the soul itself, and the disposition, 
the underlying passions, and the cutting out by the 
roots of things alien " (c. xii.). To judge the task im- 
possible would be to make impossible also the principle 
of sharing one's goods with others. ''For what shar- 



106 PEOPERTY 

ing would be left open to men if no one had anything ? ' ' 
This does not indeed quite cover the defense of riches 
as such. But it does tell against a Kteralistic and 
purely ascetic reading of Christ's teaching as to prop- 
erty, such as was evidently current in certain circles 
in Clement's day. 

Accordingly the sum of the matter is this: ** Wealth 
which benefits one's neighbours also is not to be dis- 
carded. For it is ^wealth' as being useful. It is, in 
fact, like some material or instrument, for good use 
by those who know how. . . . Such an instrument is 
riches also. Thou canst use it justly: to righteousness 
it is subservient. A man uses it unjustly : again a ser- 
vant it is found of injustice. For its nature is to be 
a servant, but not to rule. ... So let no one do away 
with possessions, but rather the passions of the soul 
such as do not permit the better use of property, in 
order that, becoming noble and good, he may be able to 
use nobly even these possessions." To those who have 
cast aside the passions of the soul which lead to abuse 
of wealth, Christ says, *^Come, follow me," as the Way , 
in the use of wealth also. 

Such was Clement's view of Christian duty as to 
property, even when amounting to riches. It was not 
exactly the primitive Christian one, which resulted 
largely from expectation of a near end to the present 
order of things; but it had at its heart the same idea ^ 
of property, whether material or spiritual, as a 
stewardship from God for the good of all within our 
reach (c. xvi.). ^^For he who holds possessions as 
God's gifts, both ministering from them to God the 
giver, unto men's salvation, and knowing that he pos- 
sesses them for the brethren's sake rather than his ■ 
own, . . . not being a slave of what he possesses and 
not carrying them about in his soul, but ever labouring • 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPEETY 107 

at some good and divine work ... he is the man 
deemed blessed by the Lord and called poor in the 
spirit . . . not one who could not live if not rich " 
(c. xvi.). 

Nay morCy man's natural stewardship towards God 
is for Christians enhanced by the debt owed to Christ 
foT laying down His life for them, ^^ This (life) He 
demands of ns in return on behalf of one another. But 
if we owe our lives to the brethren, ... should we any 
longer hoard and shut up worldly things, those beg- 
garly and alien and fleeting things?" (c. xxxvii.). 
Thus the right use of property is simply the corollary 
of love, in the peculiarly deep and real sense distinc- 
tive of the Christian Gospel. ^*Love buds into benef- 
icence." Here Clement stands on the old and broad 
basis of the common Christian conscience, as we have 
described it, and as it utters itself in a Jewish Chris- 
tian writing about Clement's owti day:^^ Every fair 
deed shall the love of man teach you to do, even 
as hatred of men suggests ill-doing." In contrast 
to such *^ philanthropy" stands the self-seeking spirit 
of greed {pleonexia)^ which readily attaches to the 
pursuit of temporal gain and prompts to doubtful 
methods therein. 

Clement can find no Christian warrant for the man 
who '* goes on trying to increase without limit, ever on 
the outlook for more, with his head bent downwards" 
(c, xvii.). On the other hand, he goes beyond the prim- 
itive Christian mode of thought in a modern direction, 
when he observes that *^it is impossible that one in 
want of the necessaries of life should not be harassed 
in mind and lack leisure for the better things, in trying 
to provide the wherewithal. How much more service- 

25 The Epistle of Clement to James (viii.-x.), prefixed to the Clemen- 
tine Homilies but probably of earlier date. 



108 PEOPEETY 

able the opposite case, when having a competency he 
both himself escapes straits as to money and is able 
to aid deserving persons." The ideal lot is, in fact, 
that happy mean between riches and poverty for which 
the **wise man" of Proverbs (xxx. 8 f.) prayed, as 
best for the soul's welfare. Yet Clement does not feel 
called on to nrge that this shonld be brought within the 
reach of all ; that so every man might have the means 
of self-expression through the true use of some prop- 
erty of his own, rather than be dependent upon the 
charity of others. But this defect was common to an- 
cient thought generally, while in Christianity ** char- 
ity" was placed on a more ideal basis. 

In TertuUian the primitive attitude to property is no 
less manifest than in his great Alexandrine contem- 
porary. **We who mingle in mind and soul," says 
he,^** **have no hesitation as to fellowship in property." 
And what is perhaps more striking, the same spirit 
animates Cyprian in the next generation, a period 
marked by not a few changes in Christian outlook. The 
two men differed a good deal in temperament; both 
were of legal training and spirit; and yet neither 
dreamt of property being held by Christians otherwise 
than in trust for God and His interests in humanity. 
Cyprian, who had himself set a signal example in the 
matter of yielding all to God's uses, discusses the duty 
of charity even to such an extent as to make a rich man 
actually a poor man, and meets current objections to 
such risks. His arguments may not all be sound, just 
as his religious theory of this duty is deeply coloured 
by legalism and the notion of meriting reward at God's 
hands; but in any case the essential idea of property 
as held on trust for God, the Giver of all goods, is there 
and injfluential. To act in the spirit of the Apostolic 

2« Apology, ch. 39. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 109 

Cliiircli in Acts is **by heavenly law to imitate the 
equality of God the Father'' in the common gifts of 
nature, which *Hhe whole human race" should 
** equally enjoy." *' After this example of equality, he 
who as a possessor on earth shares his returns and 
fruits with the brotherhood, in being by his free boun- 
ties not only open-handed (communis) but also just, 
is an imitator of God the Father. "^^ 

In these brief sentences two ideas emerge which re- 
ceive fuller expression in the next writer inviting no- 
tice on a scale similar to Clement, namely Lactantius, 
who wrote just before the change in the relations of 
Church and State under Constantino. These ideas are 
** equality'' in the enjoyment of God's bounties, and 
the ** justice" of the claim of need upon the property 
of those who have enough and to spare. To Lactantius 
in his Divine Institutes Justice is the very source of 
virtue; and its function as ''the bond of Society" is 
set forth by means of a description of life in the 
Golden Age, when men were true to God's will in giv- 
ing the earth for the common use of all, that none 
might lack. All this was disordered by Cupidity. Not 
only did men cease to share with others their super- 
fluity, but they snatched at others' property, drawing 
everything to their private gain. This the strong fur- 
ther secured by unequal laws for the defence of their 
property thus won. Thus justice disappeared, with 
its offices of humaneness, equity, and pity, and was re- 
placed by proud and swelling inequality (v. 5-6). 

Such is Lactantius 's analysis of the state of things 
prevalent in society about him, as it struck his Chris- 
tian consciousness; and the moral roots of it, judged 
in the same light, he traces to ''the desertion of Divine 
religion, which alone causes one man to hold another 

27 Ue Opere et EleeTnosynis, 2^. 



no PEOPERTY I 

dear, and to know tliat lie is bound to him by the bond 
of brotherhood, in that God is one and the same Father 
to all." It was to restore ** justice" as dutif illness 
(pietas) towards hmnanity in each and all, resting on 
like dutif Illness to ''the common Father of all," that 
Christ came. True justice, then, as inclusive of all 
virtues, has two primary forms. '* Piety and equity ^ 
{aequitas) are, as it were, its veins, for in these two 
sources the whole of justice is contained. Its fountain- 
head and origin is in the first of these, all its force and 
method {ratio) in the second. If, then. Piety is to 
know God, and the sum of this knowledge lies in prac- 
tical worship, he of course is ignorant of justice who ' 
has not religious regard for God. For how can he | 
know it in itself who is ignorant of its source!" This . 
conception Lactantius further develops in a striking ! 
simile, according to which knowledge of God is to the j 
organism of justice or true morality as the head to | 
the body, the source of life and intelligence to all the 
virtues, if these are to exist in organic unity and vital 
energy (vi. 9). 

The other part of Justice is Equity, that making 
one's self equal with others which Cicero calls '* equa- 
bility." For God, who both produces and breathes in- 
to men, has wiUed that all should be equal, that is, 
equally matched {pares) ; has imposed on all the same 
conditions of life ; has begotten all for wisdom ; has : 
promised to all immortality. None is with Him a 
slave, none a master : for if to all the same is Father, 
by equal right we all are children. Wherefore neither 
the Eomans nor the Greeks could possess justice, be- 
cause they have had men of many unequal grades, from 
poor to rich, from humble to powerful. For where all 
are not equally matched there is not equity; and in- 
equality itself excludes justice, the whole force of 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 111 

wMch lies in this, that it makes equal those who have 
come by an equal lot to the condition of this life. The 
spirit which recognizes and acts on such equity be- 
tween man and man, is called by Lactantius humanitas, 
which we may render ** humaneness'' or *Hhe feeling 
of humanity.'' It is just what the author of Ecce 
Homo means by his '* enthusiasm of humanity," when 
it exists in intimate union with the sense of the Divine 
origin and destiny of truly human nature. Such a 
ujiion is also exactly what Lactantius has himself 
gathered from the Gospels, and he further uses it as a 
fruitful principle from which to deduce all social re- 
lations. Here is how he puts it. ^*I have said what 
is due to God. I will now say what is to be rendered to 
man; although this very thing which you render to 
man is rendered to God, because man is God's image. 
However the first duty of Justice is to be united to 
God, the second to man. But the former is called re- 
ligion, the latter is named mercy of humaneness ; which 
virtue is proper to just men and worshippers of God, 
because it alone contains the principle of social life." 
The chief bond then of men naturally, is humaneness ; 
and he who has broken it, is to be deemed impious and 
a parricide. On account of this tie of relationship God 
teaches us never to do ill but always good, to afford 
aid to the oppressed and those in trouble, to bestow 
food on those that have not. For God, since He is 
Himself loyal (pius), willed man to be a social crea- 
ture. Accordingly in the case of other men we should 
think of ourselves as in their place (vi. 10). 

It is only such full and positive well-doing where- 
ever need exists and one can help from one 's own re- 
sources, and not mere abstinence from conscious in- 
jury, or aid given in exceptional c/ises, that satisfies 

that true and genuine justice ' ' wE -jch Cicero dreams 



i( 



112 PEOPERTY 

of, but '^ihe concrete and clearly expressed likeness" 
of which he regards as beyond human reach. It is 
just such a concrete ideal of justice that has been re- 
vealed and brought within the reach of men, according 
to Lactantius, in the Gospel of Christ, who has given 
absolute value to humanity, as related to God, even in 
the most despised of men. Accordingly, *' wherever a 
man's help is needed, there we should consider our 
duty to be in demand. But in what does the principle 
of justice consist more than in this, that what we afford 
to our friends through affection, that we should afford 
to strangers through humaneness? And this is after 
all afforded to God, to whom a just deed is the dearest 
of sacrifices." 

** Perhaps some one will say: If I do all this, I shall 
have nothing." Lactantius replies that, after all, the 
precepts in question are not given to a single indi- 
vidual, **but to every community (populus) which is 
united in mind and holds together as one man. If alone 
thou art not sufficient for great works, work justice 
with all a true man's might. . . . Nor think that thou 
art now being advised to lessen or indeed exhaust thy 
estate, but to turn to better uses what thou would 'st 
have spent on superfluities." In any case God will 
judge men by the laws of their own practice. 

The exposition of Lactantius has been given thus 
fully, because his seems the most explicit statement 
bearing on the Christian idea of property and its duties 
to be found in the first four centuries. In its main 
features it may be taken as also fairly representative, 
especially of the Latin "West, where the Stoic idea of 
**the law of nature," as expounded for instance by 
Cicero, remained widely influential. Thus, his prin- 
ciple, that to impart of one's larger means to those in 
need as an act of ** humanity," due to those who share 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 113 

with one's self a Divine destiny according to God's 
will, is not a deed of mere charity but of justice, is 
found half a century later in the Roman churchman 
known as **Ambrosiaster," when he says^^ that it is a 
matter of justice that a man keep not for himself alone 
what was intended by God for the equal good of all. 

So far we have dealt only with the more positive 
aspect of the Early Christian idea of property, which 
while assuming certain rights of private ownership 
laid great stress upon the moral duties conditioning 
its exercise. God is recognized not only as the real 
Owner of all He has made and is constantly making 
and giving to mankind, but also as Father in His pur- 
pose touching its equitable use among His Jiuman 
family at large. But there were certain limitations 
under which these ideas for long operated, particularly 
the institution of slavery and the absence of a sound 
constructive theory of civil society, especially in its 
economic bearings. 

These defects, which were part of the historical con- 
ditions amid which the earlv Church's lot was cast, 
were the harder for the Christian consciousness at 
once to transcend owing to two sets of causes affecting 
its own original outlook, the one temporary and acci- 
dental, the other intrinsic. The accidental hindrances 
were the expectation of the speedy end of the existing 
order by Divine intervention, and the fact that Chris- 
tians long formed but a small minority within a spiritu- 
ally alien social environment — a circumstance which 
restricted both freedom of action and reflective initia- 
tive. The intrinsic causes, on the other hand, flowed 
directly from the very genius of Christianity itself. 
''The Gospel" being ''the glad tidings of benefits that 
pass not away," "it aims at raising the individual to a 

28 Commentary on 2 Cor. ix. 9. 



114 PEOPERTY 

standpoint far above the conflicts between earthly 
prosperity and earthly distress, between riches and 
poverty, lordship and service. "^^ Snch ^*holy indiffer- 
ence" to all merely earthly conditions tended natu- 
rally, especially under the accidental conditions just 
specified, to concentrate Christian effort upon rooting 
the eternal boon of spiritual liberty in the souls of men, 
to the comparative neglect of social and economic con- 
ditions which had to do primarily with bodily comfort 
and welfare. Yet it is a mistake to suppose that Chris- 
tians were ever indifferent to actual bodily distress or 
hardship in others, even if they believed these things 
could be overruled to their own good or to needed disci- 
pline. The Church's ideal in these matters was that 
of a modest sufficiency, gained by a man's o^vn labour 
and enabling him to do deeds of mercy to others. But 
it had not yet enough leisure of soul or mind to direct 
its thought to the immense problem of the economic 
reconstruction of the Eoman Empire. What it could 
do at once, that to a large extent it did. It created a 
fresh spirit, a new attitude of brotherhood and spirit- 
ual equality irrespective of all outward distinctions, 
based on the inherent sanctity of human personality, as 
heir to Divine sonship; and this was bound forthwith 
to make all relations new, and in the end — if main- 
tained in its original purity of emphasis — to leaven 
every circle of thought and action, however ethically 
remote from such a dynamic centre. Nay more, it fur- 
nished within its own special sphere, the Christian 
community, an object-lesson of its inherent tendencies, 
on a voluntary basis, stimulated by a public opinion 
which revered such of its members as were devoted 
and original enough to carry out as individuals the full 
Christian ideal even in an alien social order. Thus 

29 Harnack, in Essays on the Social Gospel, 1907, p. 9. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPEETY 115 

even within the institution of slavery it produced a 
new moral atmosphere, especially where the new re- 
ligious relation obtained on both sides ; while it greatly 
encouraged the freeing of slaves on principle and not 
merely as a deed of liberality. 

(a) In thinking of slavery, the greatest of abuses of 
property rights, perhaps the best approach to the 
Christian attitude under the Eoman Empire is through 
Seneca, who was contemporary with the birth of Chris- 
tianity. As distinct from Aristotle, who represents the 
ancient classical view that many men are by nature 
destined for slavery and have no right to freedom, 
Seneca held that since all men have at bottom — in what 
is noblest and most characteristic — essentially the same 
nature, this common humanity makes slavery a breach 
of natural law or right. Here the significant thing is 
that it is the religious element in Seneca 's thought that 
makes all the difference. It is his truer idea of per- 
sonality which leads him to his truer notion of human 
rights ; and this is the outcome of his religious outlook, 
which thus lifts humanity above a naturalistic level 
of valuation and makes it something sacred, an end in 
and to itself. Here is the meeting ground of Seneca 
and Christianity, and it is characteristic of the religi- 
ous view of life, socially as well as individually. The 
point at which they diverge, the less steady way in 
which Seneca carries out the thought, suggests the 
greater power of the Christian idea of God, based on 
a more vivid and sure sense of His personality as re- 
vealed in Jesus Christ. 

But apart from this difference of moral dynamic in 
the teaching of Seneca and the early Christians, their 
practical attitude to slavery was much the same. They 
bade the individual rise to a sense of spiritual freedom 
in spite of outward bondage, rather than denounce the 



116 PEOPEETY 

institution as an altogether illegitimate form of prop- 
erty. The reason for this stopping short of the full 
application of the religious idea of persons was, in 
either case, expediency under actual conditions. This 
was specially clear and urgent for the Christian com- 
munity, whose status, already precarious in the eye of 
Eoman law, would have been rendered quite untenable, 
if colour were given to the suspicion that it meant 
social revolution on the part of slaves, i.e. the working 
class as a whole. Hence the official Christian policy^^^ 
for the brief ** present distress'' was patient endur- 
ance of wrong *^ after the flesh" in the power of free- 
dom '4n the spirit.'' After all the principle of author- 
ity in society was of the Divine appointment,^^ and 
should not hastily be revolted against, even if identi- 
fied with what, like slavery, clearly bore the mark of 
human sin, as selfishness and injustice. Where free- 
dom was within reach in an orderly way, by a master 's 
good will, let it be embraced. Such seems St. Paul's 
advice in 1 Cor. vii. 21, though the passage came to be 
read otherwise by many Church Fathers. Apart from 
this, Christians had a special reason for deeming 
direct efforts to abolish property in slaves as inex- 
pedient, in their belief that the whole status quo of 
society was doomed to imminent radical change by the 
hand of God. Indeed it is in this light that we must re- 
gard their thought and practice as to all property dur- 
ing the period when the primitive view of *^the King- 
dom of God" prevailed. On the other hand, we must 
notice how later changes in the Christian idea of prop- 
erty went along with changes in this determinative 
conception, that of God's Kingdom, its nature, and the 
time and place relations of its realization. Such his- 

30 E.g. in the Epistle to Philemon, Col. iii. 22 ff., Eph. vi. 5 if., and 
1 Peter ii. 11-18, iii. 13-17, iv. 12-19. 

31 Rom. xiii. 1-7, 1 Pet. ii. 13 S. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPEETY 117 

torical circumspection will help to save us from not a 
few current but grave errors touching both the spirit 
of Christianity and its view of property as a legal and 
economic institution. 

(b) So, too, early Christian aloofness from society 
was not in the main due to **other-worldliness" of 
spirit in the sense of a dualistic attitude to life under 
material conditions, or a bias against normal bodily 
enjoyment of any kind. This is totally foreign to 
Christ ^s own attitude to Nature and human life. No 
doubt there was an *^ ascetic" element in His practice 
as determined by His special mission, and also in His 
teaching to others in so far as they were called to share 
the urgent task of preaching the Gospel of the King- 
dom as at hand. Eelative to such functions property 
was but a clog. Yet all were not called to *Hake up 
their Cross" of self-denial in the same way: there was 
a normal life of labour in gaining for one's self and 
others the daily bread which was in no way depreci- 
ated. Only superfluity is regarded as a clogging in- 
fluence, as it grows to actual ** wealth" and promotes 
the temper which 'trusts in" riches and their plea- 
sures. And this, broadly speaking, was also the atti- 
tude of primitive Christianity, so long as it was deter- 
mined by the Biblical type of piety proper to its Pales- 
tinian home. It was only when it passed out into the 
Graeco-Eoman world that another type of asceticism, 
foreign in origin, began subtly to blend with the older 
type of self -discipline with the positive intent of spirit- 
ual freedom, through simplicity of bodily desires, for 
service of God and man in love. But apart from this 
secondary development, which as time went on as- 
sumed immense dimensions and had far-reaching is- 
sues, the early Christian spirit towards material con- 
ditions was not ** other-worldly"; for the scene of the 



118 PEOPEETY 

Kingdom of God was to be this earth, transformed in- 
deed in such a way as to remove all sin and evil, yet 
the material home of a life in human society not essen- 
tially other than might be experienced here and now 
within the new Christian community, with its purified 
social order. The Lord's Prayer embodies this con- 
ception of the Kingdom unmistakably, and contains in 
the order and emphasis of its petitions, including that 
for daily bread, the principles of the new social idea. 
The claims of the Heavenly Father and His will are 
regulative from beginning to end. Over against such 
an ideal of human life the existing pagan order of 
society was alien in spirit; and as such it seemed be- 
yond the hope of renovation by human efforts, how- 
ever inspired, rather than by sudden Divine cataclysm, 
of which the fall of the hostile Jewish State seemed 
the first stage. 

But this foreshortened perspective of the King- 
dom's history on earth began slowly to recede into the 
background of the Christian consciousness, from the 
date of the publication of the Fourth Gospel, with its 
emphasis on ** Eternal Life" as already present in its 
essential factors ; and for a time Christians were sadly 
perplexed between the older and the newer outlook. 
In some circles the transition was quicker than in others. 
But the tendency was inevitable; and before the end 
of the third century the estimate of existing society, 
as embodying an order that might yet be leavened 
throughout, began to grow more positive, and was fur- 
ther enhanced by the adhesion of the imperial head of 
the State. Thus the sense of the alien nature of the 
social organism amidst which the Church lived and 
had its being tended to pass away during the fourth 
century, as the Empire became more and more Chris- 
tian in profession, and paganism lost formal control 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPERTY 119 

of society and its customs, while Christian bishops 
gained ever more influence and even legal authority in 
the world of affairs and of social custom. Filled with 
wonder and gratitude at this broad reversal of con- 
ditionsj Christians neglected to criticize economic and 
social institutions closely in the light of the Gospel. 
No doubt the change tended on the whole to a more 
responsible and Christian use of property in various 
ways, particularly in the ameliorating of the servile 
lot, though slavery as such w^as not as a rule opposed 
on Christian principle. But on the whole a great 
chance v/as missed ; and the social order, remaining at 
this crucial point unadjusted to the full spirit of the 
Gospel of Divine Fatherhood and Human Brother- 
hood, came to react adversely on Christian ideals of 
property generally. Broadly speaking, the idea of 
property as a social and economic institution really 
remained pagan and, so far as embodied in law, Roman 
in its spirit and presuppositions. 

Nor is it hard to see how this should be so. The 
very genius of Christianity laid the main stress upon 
the spiritual or the intrinsic riches of the soul, rather 
than upon material conditions. Further j the historical 
conditions of the Church's life for nearly three cen- 
turies under the alien Empire, as already shown in 
connexion with slavery, were such as to prevent the 
natural extension of Christian thought from the pri- 
mary to the secondary, yet influential, factors in man's 
concrete life in society. Accordingly when it would 
have become natural, with the changed relations of 
Church and State, for the Christian conscience to take 
upon itself fuller and wider responsibility for all social 
conditions affecting the welfare of men, including their 
mutual relations as equal before God and called to 
live as brothers in co-operative justice and love, it did 



120 PEOPERTY 

not rise to the height of its ethical ideal. There are 
no signs that the Church of the fourth century had 
or tended to create any new and constructive ideal of 
social well-being even for its own members, much less 
for the commonweal at large; while the economic as- 
pects of the problem in any comprehensive sense lay 
quite below the horizon of its thought. That is, it 
simply shared the conventional ideas underlying the 
existing economic order, and the hand-to-mouth meth- 
ods of dealing with its anomalies and evils. 

Why was this? Why did not the Christian con- 
science concern itself more with such things, as it did 
(within the limits then restricting its action) with 
kindred evils in the early days of the Gospel? The 
answer must be, at bottom, that its idea of the Gospel 
itself had changed a good deal in emphasis. The old 
ethical passion, where it existed, had been diverted in 
the interval during which Christians had been largely 
shut out from direct influence upon social conditions, 
into largely different channels, especially those of self- 
salvation by ascetic retreat from the world. The spirit 
of moral initiative so characteristic of **faith'' in the 
early personal sense, the faith which felt able and 
bound to ** overcome the world," outside as well as in- 
side its own bosom, was no longer prevalent ; and so no 
fresh theory of what the social order should be made 
by Christian influence dawned on it in power, and no 
corresponding idea of property. Here, most of all, re- 
treat from the normal social order on the part of the 
most zealous souls, in the interests of a monastic ideaP^ 
which meant despair of the leavening of society, was 
disastrous both in practice and in theory. It meant 
a virtual dualism between true religious life and duty, 

32 Though that ideal itself included communal ownership in place of 
private property, as is pointed out in the next Essay. 



BIBLICAL IDEA OF PEOPEETY 121 

on the one hand, and civic and economic life on the 
other. The latter sphere was thns in principle left to 
go its own way according to its own secular and selfish 
laws, as a system ontside the redemptive control of 
Christian motives and methods, yet a system in which 
Christians were involved and for the hmnan issnes of 
which they could not bnt be largely responsible. Such 
a secession of ^*the religious" par excellence could not 
but hinder the growth of a truly constructive theory of 
societVj and of property as relative thereto ; and could 
not but prevent the rise of a Christian public opinion 
adequate to originate and maintain any far-reaching 
economic reform. Finally, at the close of the fourth 
century, a definite theological doctrine, tending to sup- 
port such practical pessimism touching the possibility 
of justice, in the fuU sense, in ordinary civic relations, 
added its weight to the negative scale. 

But apart from the tendency of the Latin doctrine 
of Original Sin, as applied to civil society, to obscure 
the sacredness of its essential or ideal ends, the very 
idea of the petition *^Thy kingdom come. Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven,'' was already fading 
from current Christian thought and endeavour in 
any comprehensive social sense. Therewith the true 
Christian idea of property passed largely into abey- 
ance ; nor have conditions equally favourable to its re- 
emergence returned since then until now. Is it too 
much to hope that our own age, with its conscious 
jeffort to return, through past experience, and in an 
historic spirit which allows for the relative elements 
in primitive Christianity, to the essential ideals of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ for mankind at large, may take 
a long step towards working out the bearings of those 
ideals on Property, as a large factor in the task of 
iSocial betterment? 



122 PEOPEETY 

The note of religion is responsibility ; and the genins 
of Christian religion, as we have seen, is a sense of the 
sovereign worth of hnman personality as compared 
with all else in life. This implies the duty of having 
all things in harmony with the interests of persons, 
not only in the disposal of wealth and the opportunities 
it affords, bnt also in the ways by which it is acquired, 
as these aif ect the persons employed as means to eco- 
nomic ends. Between competing human interests in 
this sphere God is the supreme arbiter, as He is also 
the real creator and owner of all wealth, whether ma- 
terial or mental; and into His ears enters the cry of 
them that are overreached in the co-operative business 
of utilizing His gifts. The unsolved problem, then, for 
Christian civilization in particular, is how to do justice,! 
as between persons in the use of the wealth which is-! 
now so adequate in the gross for the needs of all mem- 
bers of the social commonwealth. The answer to this 
problem turns largely on a thoughtfully just idea of 
Property and its social implications, matters on which 
further data emerge in the course of other essays in 
this volume. 



THE THEOEY OF PEOPEETY IN 
MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 



BY 

The Rev. A. J. CARLYLE, D.Litt. 

CHAPLx^IT? AND LECTURER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS, 
UNIVERSITY COLIvEGE, OXFORD 



SUMMARY 

I. The conception of the New Testament and the early Fathers rep- 
resents the principle of the claims of the Brotherhood. Permanence 
of the conception, which is represented by the organized charity of the 
Christian Church. 

We are here concerned with the nature of the theory of property 
which lay behind this, as it was developed by the later Fathers and 
mediaeval writers. 

II. Mediaeval theory founded mainly on that of the great Fathers. 
The form of this derived primarily from the later philosophical theory 

of the ancient world. 

The distinction between nature and convention. 

The Fathers held that by nature all things are common, that private 
property is the result of avarice, but also a restraint upon it. 

Private property is lawful, but the common right remains, and is 
represented by the obligation to maintain the needy. 

Almsgiving is an action of justice, not merely of mercy. 

Private property is the creation of the State, and belongs to positive 
law, and is limited by its utility. 

Summary of the Patristic theory. 

III. The Patristic principles furnish the substance of the mediaeval 
theory. 

The Canonists held that private property belonged to the law of 
custom and institution, not to the law of nature. 

By the law of nature all things are common, and this principle was 
represented in the primitive Church and in the theory of Plato. 

Private property is the creation of the State. 

St. Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the origin of property more 
complex. 

Distinction between the right to acquire and distribute, and the right 
to use. 

In the first sense private property is legitimate and necessary, in 
the second sense a man must hold it as for the common use. 

The influence of Aristotle on St. Thomas. 

Private property not an institution of the natural law, but not 
contrary to it. 

St. Thomas's theory of the rights of property the same aa that of 
the Fathers and the other mediaeval writers. 

St. Peter Damian's phrase that the rich are dispensatores, not pos- 
sessores. 

The Canonists held that no man has a right to more than he needs, 
but recognize that some may need more than others. 

St, Thomas's view is the same: almsgiving is an act of mercy in its 
intention, but is also a matter of obligation. He goes indeed so far 
as to maintain that in case of necessity a man may take what he needs. 

In case of necessity all things are common. 

IV. Such conceptions are in some ways far removed from ours. 

We have transcended the sharp opposition between the natural and 
the conventional. 

We recognize the organic process of the development of institutions, 
and the relation of private property to individuality. But the medi- 
aeval conceptions are not unmeaning. We recognize the unity of life, 
and the truth of the conception of a common right. 

This is the meaning of the principle of brotherhood, and is the true 
guide to social regulation and action. 

124 



V 

THE THEORY OF PROPERTY IN 
MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 

The last essay has drawn out the conception of the 
nature of property as it is presented in the Old and 
New Testaments and in the writings of the early 
Fathers. It is clear that their conception of the nature 
and rights of property was controlled by the principle 
of the claims of the Brotherhood, and expressed itself- 
in the administration of help to those who were in 
need. This conception never died out in the Christian 
Church. It would, indeed, be impossible to deal with 
this subject completely without taking into account the 
history of charity, or almsgiving, in the Christian 
Church. In our day we are, no doubt, very conscious 
of the great difficulties which surround this subject, 
difficulties so great and serious that there are some 
w^ho thinlc that the time is rapidly approaching when 
this function of the organized Christian Society must 
be, at any rate in large measure, transferred to other 
organizations. But whatever may be the truth of this, 
we should fall into a complete misconception of our 
subject if we even for a moment forgot that the 
Church, from the days of the Apostles down to our 
own times, has looked upon the help and maintenance 
of the needy as among the first of the obligations of 
the religious life, and that this principle has been rep- 

125 



126 PEOPERTY 

resented by an immense network of institutions, and 
by the constant practice of Christian people. 

We are, however, now concerned primarily with the 
conception of the nature of property which has lain 
behind these habits and institutions; and this essay 
attempts very briefly to set out the substance of these 
principles as they were conceived in the Middle Ages. 

The theory of the Middle Ages is founded upon the 
theory of property as it was set forth in the writings 
of the great Fathers from the fourth to the seventh 
century, and it is therefore to them that we must first 
turn our attention. As we shall presently see in more 
detail the theory of these Fathers represents not 
merely the influence of the New Testament and the 
sense of the Christian Brotherhood, but is related to 
the general principles of current philosophical theory 
in the later centuries of the ancient world. Indeed, it 
has not yet been sufficiently understood in how great a 
degree the intellectual conceptions of the Fathers and 
of the Middle Ages take their form and even their 
substance from the general thought of these centuries. 
The philosophical conceptions of the great Fathers 
have always their specifically Christian character ; but 
the general education of these Fathers — and they be- 
longed to what we may call the educated classes — fur- 
nished the forms into which they threw their distinc- 
tive conceptions, and, in the matter of social and politi- 
cal theory, much of the substance of their theory. 

If we were to attempt to find a phrase which might 
represent the form of their theory, we might say that 
it lies in the distinction between nature and convention. 
In order to understand this distinction we must bear in 
mind that nature, in the later centuries of the ancient 
world, means primarily, not the perfection of a thing. 



■■J 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 127 

as it does in Aristotle, but the primitive or original 
form of a thing ; while the phrase also usually conveys 
the suggestion that this primitive or original form has 
some continuing superiority over the conventional in- 
stitution or custom which has grown out of it ; or more 
accurately perhaps, that the natural represents some- 
thing essential, which may be modified for practical 
purposes by the conventional, but cannot be wholly set 
aside. This will become clear as we consider the de- 
tails of the theory of property. 

The most arresting aspect of the patristic theory of 
property is well illustrated by such phrases as those 
of St. Ambrose, when he says that nature produced all 
things for the common use of all men, that nature pro- 
duced the common right of property, but usurpation 
the private right; or again that God wished the earth 
to be the common possession of all men, to produce its 
fruits for ail men, but avarice created, the rights of 
property.^ These phrases represent the normal stand- 
point of the later Fathers.^ 

What does this mean? At first sight it might seem 
to be an assertion of Communism, a denunciation of 
private property as a thing which is sinful and unlaw- 
ful. But this is not what the Fathers mean. There 
can be little doubt that we find the source of these 
words of St. Ambrose in such a phrase as that of 
Cicero, **Sunt autem privata nulla natura,"^ and in 
the Stoic tradition which is represented in one of 
Seneca's letters, where he describes the primitive life 
in which men lived together in peace and happiness, 
when there was no system of coercive government and 
no private property, and says that men passed out of 

1 St. Ambrose, De offtcUs, i. 28 ; Comm. on Ps. cxviii. 8. 22. 

2 Cf . Ambrosiaster, Comm. on 2 Cor. ix. 9 ; St. Gregory the Great, 
Liher Regulae Pastoralis, iii. 21. 

3 Cicero, De officiis, i. 7. 



128 PROPERTY 

these primitive conditions as their first innocence dis- 
appeared, as they became avaricious and dissatisfied 
with the common enjoyment of the good things of the 
world, and desired to hold them as their private pos- 
sessions.* 

Here we have the qnasi-philosophical theory from 
which the patristic conception is derived. When men 
were innocent there was no need for private property^ 
or the other great conventional institutions of society; 
but as this innocence passed away, they found them- 
selves compelled to organize society and to devise in- 
stitutions which should regulate the ownership and 
use of the good things which men had once held in com- 
mon. The institution of property thus represents both 
the fall of man from his primitive innocence, the greed 
and avarice which refused to recognize the common 
ownership of things, and also the method by which the 
blind greed of human nature may be controlled and 
regulated. It is this ambiguous origin of the institu- 
tion which explains how the Fathers could hold that 
private property was not natural, that it grew out of 
men's sinful and vicious desires, and at the same time 
that it was a legitimate institution. For it must be 
clearly understood that they do maintain this. St. 
Augustine puts this very clearly in several passages 
of his writings, and he represents the general consent 
of the Fathers.^ 

This does not, however, mean that the principle that 
private property was a thing contrary to nature had a 
merely theoretical importance. On the contrary, it is, 
I think, clear that the Fathers adopted this quasi- 
philosophical theory so readily, not only because it 

* Seneca, Epistles, xiv. 2. 

5 Cf . St. Augustine, Contra Adimantum, xx. 2; De morihus Ecclesiae 
GathoUcae, i. 35; St. Ambrose, Epist. Ixiii. 92; St. Hilary of Poitiers, 
Comm. on Matt. xix. 9; Salvian, Ad Ecclesiam, i. 7. 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 129 

mav have been the doctrine of the schools in which 
they were educated, but also because it fitted in very 
well with the traditions which they derived from the 
New Testament and the Early Church, the tradition 
that a man must help his brother who is in need. These 
Fathers are clear that though the institution of private 
property is lawful, yet the claims of all those who are 
in want continue to be valid. This principle is admir- 
ably represented in one of those passages from St. 
Ambrose ^s writings to which reference has already 
been made. 

It was the will of God, he says, that the earth should 
be the common possession of all men, and should fur- 
nish its fruits to all, it was avarice which created the 
rights of property; it is therefore just that the man 
who claims for his private ownership that wiiich was 
given to the human race in common, should at least 
distribute some of this to the poor.^ It is very signifi- 
cant that St. Ambrose treats charity or almsgiving as 
an action of justice, and this conception is set out very 
clearly by other Christian writers. Ambrosiaster, for 
instance, as the previous essay has pointed out, deals 
with the matter in a very significant phrase when he 
says that this act of mercy, that is, almsgiving, is called 
justice, for God gave all things in common to all men ; 
he is, therefore, a just man who does not retain for 
himself alone that which he knows was given to all : all 
things are God's, and God who gives them commands 
us to give of them to those who are in need ; this is 
justice, that, as it is God who gives, a man should give 
again to him who needs.'' And St. Gregory lends his 
great authority to this principle, for he says that, when 
we minister the necessaries of life to those who are in 

« St, Ambrose, Oomm. on Ps. cxviii. 8. 22. 
7 Ambrosiaster, Cormru. on 2 Cor. ix. 9. 



130 PEOPERTY 

want, we render to them that which is their oa\ti, we 
do not give what is ours ; we are discharging an obliga- 
tion of justice rather than doing an act of mercyc^ 

This principle, that almsgiving is an act of justice 
rather than of mercy, is very significant, and forms a 
very important element in the patristic conception of 
the nature of property. It is true that the word jus- 
tice was difficult to define then, as at other times; but 
we shall probably not be far wrong if we suppose that 
to the Fathers its meaning was very much the same as 
that which is expressed in the formal definition of 
Ulpian: ^'Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas 
ju suum cuique tribuendi. ' '^ To act justly is to give 
a man that which belongs to him. When, therefore, 
the Fathers say that almsgiving is an act of justice, 
there is little doubt that they mean that the man who 
is in need has a legitimate right to claim for his need 
that which is to another man a superfluity. As we 
shall see, this conception became very important when 
the mediaeval writers attempted to reduce these prin- 
ciples to a systematic form. 

One great Father, St. Augustine, has also left us a 
detailed account of the more immediate origin of prop- 
erty rights. Property in his view is the creation of 
the State. This is quite consistent with the more gen- 
eral conception of its origin in the conventional system 
of life which men^s vices have made necessary. For 
the first and most general of these conventions of men, 
when they lost their original innocence, was the co- 
ercive State itself ; and as it was its function, from the 
standpoint of the philosophical system in which St. 
Augustine was trained, to impose some order upon the 
chaos of the warring passions and desires of human 
nature, so especially was it the function of the State to 

8 St. Gregory the Great, Lib. Reg. Post, iii. 21. 9 Digest, i. I, 10. 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 131 

decide between the conflicting claims of individuals to 
the possession and enjoyment of property. 

St. Augustine holds that private property is the cre- 
ation of the State and exists only in virtue of the pro- 
tection of the State. To some Donatists who, not un- 
naturally, objected to the confiscation of their property 
in the interests of the Catholics, he replies by asking 
by what law they held their property, by human or 
divine law; and he answers the question himself, and 
says that it is only by human law that a man can say, 
^*This is my house, ^' or **This man is my slave.'' It 
is the law of the Emperor upon which is founded any 
right of property : it is idle therefore for the Donatists 
to say, ^^Wliat have we to do with the Emperor?" If 
you take away the laws of the Emperor, who could 
say This is my house, or This is my slave V^ In another 
place he very contemptuously sets aside the claim of 
the Donatists to hold as their property that which they 
had accumulated by their labours." In other passages 
he maintains that the right of property is limited by the 
use to wiiich it is put, a man who does not use his prop- 
erty rightly has no real or valid claim to it.^^ It is 
clear that St. Augustine regarded private property as 
being normally a creation, not of the divine, but of 
the positive law, and as subject to the determination of 
the State, and limited by the degree of its utility. 

If we now attempt to put together these patristic 
principles with regard to property, w^e find that they 
represent a coherent system of thought, important in 
its practical significance, however inadequate it may 
seem when regarded from the standpoint of a strictly 
scientific examination of the nature of the institution. 

These theories are intelligible only when brought 

10 St. Augustine, Tract VI. in Joannis Eixing. 25. 

11 St. Augustine, Epist. xciii. II. 

12 St. Augustine, Epist. cliii. 6; Bermo, 1. 2. 



132 PKOPEETY l 

into relation with that fundamental conception of the i 
contrast between the natural and the conventional to 
which reference has already been made. This view 
is the opposite of that of Locke, that private property 
is an institution of natural law, and arises out of labour. 
To the Fathers the only natural condition is that of 
common ownership and individual use. The world was 
made for the common benefit of mankind, that all 
should receive from it what they require. They admit, 
however, that human nature being what it is, greedy, 
avaricious, and vicious, it is impossible for men to live 
normally under the condition of common ownership. 
This represents the more perfect way of life, and this 
principle was represented in the organization of the 
monastic life, as it gradually took shape. For mankind 
in general, some organization of ownership became 
necessary, and this was provided by the State and its 
laws, which have decided the conditions and limitations 
of ownership. Private property is therefore prac- 
tically the creation of the State, and is defined, limited, 
and changed by the State. 

While, however, the Fathers recognize the legal right 
of private property, as a suitable and necessary con- 
cession to human infirmity, a necessary check upon 
human vice, they are also clear that from the religious 
and moral standpoint the position of private property 
is somewhat different. The conventional organization 
of life is legitimate, but the natural law is not only 
primitive, but also remains in some sense supreme. 
Whatever conventional organization may be found nec- 
essary for the practical adjustment of human affiairs, 
the ultimate nature of things still holds good. Private 
property is allowed, but only in order to avoid the 
danger of violence and confusion; and the institution 
cannot override the natural right of a man to obtain 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 133 

what lie needs from the abundance of that which the 
earth brings forth. This is what the Fathers mean 
wlmn they call the maintenance of the needy an act of 
justice, not of mercy : for it is justice to give to a man 
that which is his own, and the needy have a moral 
right to what they require. We shall have to discuss 
the question further when we turn to the theory of 
property in the Canon Law and in the Schoolmen, 
[n the meantime it is clear that the Fathers, while they 
ievelop the theory of property in relation to the 
philosophical views of the schools, do still under these 
terms maintain the principles which are characteristic 
yl the New Testament. The new conditions of the 
Christian Empire had actually transformed, or per- 
verted, the original conditions of the Christian broth- 
srhood, but its principles remained the same. 

When we now turn to the mediaeval theory of 
property, we find that the patristic principles furnish 
much of its form and substance. One of the most 
characteristic and representative phrases of the 
Middle Ages is that in which Gratian, the great com- 
piler of the Canon Law in the twelfth century, illus- 
trates the distinction between the law of nature and 
custom, or positive law, in relation to property. By 
the law of nature, he says, all things are common 
to all men: and this principle was observed by those 
Christians of whom it is written, in the Acts of the 
Apostles, that the multitude of those who believed 
were of one heart and soul. This principle had also 
been handed down by the philosophers, and thus in 
the writings of Plato the most just state was so or- 
dered that no man had merely personal desires : it is . 
only by the law of custom or of institution that this 
is mine and that is another 's.^^ 

13 Gratian, Deci'etum, D. viii. Part I. 



134 PEOPEETY 

This does not mean, in Gratian any more than in 
the Fathers, that private property is not lawful, but. 
only that it is an accommodation to the imperfect orj 
vicions character of hnman nature. If men were per- 
fectly good it would be unnecessary; and it is worth 
noticing that he looked upon the primitive Christian; 
community as illustrating the ideal temper, and relates 
this to the conception that in the ideal State things 
might be so ordered that this private appropriation 
of things would be unnecessary. Actually private 
property is the creation of the State, and Gratian re- 
peats the phrases of. St. Augustine in which this is 
set out.^* 

These principles are related to, but modified in, 
the more developed treatment of the subject by St. 
Thomas Aquinas. He is anxious both to explain the 
origin and justification of private property, and to 
determine more clearly its limitations. In the Stimma 
Theologica he discusses the question with character- 
istic fulness and precision, and sets out a distinction 
in the nature of property which he conceives to be 
fundamental ; that is, the distinction between property 
regarded as a right to acquire and to distribute and 
property regarded as a right to use for one's self. In 
the first sense he recognizes property as legitimate and 
necessary, because men are more diligent in labouring 
for that which is to belong to themselves than for that 
which is to belong to all; because human affairs will 
be better ordered if each has his own particular work 
to do in procuring things ; and because human life wiU 
thus be more peaceable, for there are constant quar- 
rels among those who hold things in common. In the 
second sense he refuses to recognize a private right in 
property, for a man must hold those things which are 

1* Gratian, Deoretuniy D. viii. I. 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 135 

Ms as for the common use, he must minister of what 
he has to the necessities of others.^^ 

We shall probably be right in connecting his treat- 
ment of private property with his study of Aristotle, 
for the arguments in the Summa are closely related to 
his notes on the second book of the Politics.^^ St. 
Thomas is, indeed, so much influenced by Aristotle ^s 
conception of nature and the State that he is no longer 
ready to admit that the great institutions of society 
are contrary to natural law. To him the State is a 
natural institution, for man is by nature a political 
animal, and this principle extends to a great institu- 
tion like private property. It is not, indeed, an insti- 
tution of the natural law, but it is not contrary to it, 
it is a thing added to the natural law by human 
reason.^^ 

St. Thomas Aquinas 's modification of the patristic 
theory is important; how far it governed the later 
mediaeval conceptions it would be difficult to say. 
Speaking broadly, his adoption of the Aristotelian 
conception of nature and the State had little perma- 
nent influence, for the theory of the conventional na- 
ture of organized society was too firmly rooted to be 
shaken, even by his authority, and the patristic and 
Stoic principle continued to dominate political theory 
till the end of the eighteenth century. 

When we turn to his conception of the rights of 
property we find little difference between the tradi- 
tional principles of the Fathers and mediaeval writers 
in general and those of St. Thomas Aquinas. There 
is an interesting treatment of this topic in one of the 
smaller treatises of St. Peter Damian in the eleventh 

15 St. Thomas Aquinas, SumTYia Theol. 2, 2, Qu. 66, 2. 

16 St. Thomas Aquinas, Comm. on Aristotle's Politics ii. Lectio 4. 

17 St. Thomas Aquinas, Surivma Theol. 2, 2, Qu. 66, 2. 



136 PEOPEETY 

century. Men who are ricli, he says, are dispensatores 
rather than possessores; they should not reckon that 
which they have to be their own; they have not re- 
ceived their temporal goods merely to be consumed 
in their own use, but are to act as administrators of 
these goods/^ This is no doubt related to the tradition 
represented by the Fathers in passages to which we 
have already referred, in which they maintain that it 
is just that those who receive from the Lord should 
use what they have for the common good. 

The Fathers, as we have seen, held that almsgiving 
was an act of justice, not of mercy, because the rights 
of private property cannot alter the fact that God 
meant the earth to furnish its fruits for the maiii 
tenance of all men. The Canonists, too, set out very 
clearly the principle that no man has really the right 
to hold for himself more than he needs. Gratian cites, 
as from St. Ambrose, a passage denouncing as unjust 
and avaricious the man who consumes in luxury what 
might have supplied the needs of those who are in 
want, and maintaining that it is as great a crime to 
refuse the necessaries of life to those who are in want 
as it is to take from a man the things which are his. 
In another place he refers to a saying which he attrib- 
utes to St. Jerome, that a man who keeps for himself 
more than he needs, is guilty of taking that which be- 
longs to another.^® These are far-reaching principles, 
but there are some qualifying phrases. In another 
place Gratian quotes a passage from St. Augustine, 
in which he urges that the needs of different people 
vary, that the rich are not to be required to use the 
same food as the poor, but may have such food as 
their infirmity has made necessary for them, while at 

18 St. Peter Damian, Opttsculum, ix. 

19 Gratian, Deer. D. xlvii. 8. 3; D, xlii, Part I. 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 137 

the same time they ought to lament the fact that they 
require this indulgence.^^ 

It is no doubt in this tradition that we must look for 
the origin of that sharp distinction which, as we have 
Already said, St. Thomas Aquinas makes between 
roperty as the right of distribution of things, and 
fownership regarded as an unlimited right to use for 
Ipne's self. St. Thomas maintains that private prop- 
lerty is lawful and not contrary to nature, but that 
fprivate rights cannot override the common right of 
Iparikind to the necessaries of life. In discussing the 
inature of almsgiving he argues that it is an action 
iwhich belongs to love (Charitas) and mercy in its 
jspiritual character or intention, but it is also a matter 
of obligation {in praecepto) ; for temporal possessions 
are indeed private as regards ownership, but not as 
regards their use : as regards use, so far as they are 
superfluities, they belong to others who have need of 
them. He admits, however, that the distinction be- 
tween the necessaries and the superfluities of life de- 
pends largely upon the conditions of a man's life.^^ 

Thus his view of the nature of the rights of prop- 
erty is substantially the same as that of the Fathers 
and Canonists ; but he draws from it a conclusion 
which Gratian does not set out, and which indeed he 
may have intended to condemn. Gratian, in discussing 
the question how" far alms may be given from prop- 
erty unlawfully acquired, quotes a passage from St. 
Augustine which severely condemns the notion that a 
Irawa may steal from rich and avaricious persons, and 
give what is stolen to the poor.^^ St. Thomas, on the 
I contrary, maintains that as human law cannot over- 

20 Gratian, Deer. D. xli. 3. 

21 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa TheoL 2, 2 ; Qu. 32, 1, 5, 6. 

22 Gratian, Deer. C. xiv. Q. 5, 3. 



138 PEOPEETY 

turn natural and Divine law, and as material, or in-- 
ferior, things were made to supply men's necessities,, 
if there is evident and urgent need, a man may legiti-- 
mately take either openly or by stealth what he needs, , 
and it is even legitimate in such cases that one man. 
should take another man's property to help him whoj, 
is in want. In the case of extreme necessity, Bt\ 
Thomas says, all things are common.^ 



23 



Such in outline ar^ the conceptions of property held 
by the Christian Fathers and the mediaeval Canonists 
and Schoolmen. We are dealing with conceptions 
which are in some respects far removed from ours* 
In the modern world we have transcended the sharp 
opposition between the natural and the conventional, 
on which the patristic and canonical theory is based, 
we recognize the organic process of the development 
of institutions and ideas, and cannot be satisfied with 
any treatment of private property which looks upon it , 
as a mere mechanical contrivance of the State for the" 
correction of men's vices, but rather recognize in the 
development of the individual relation to things an 
aspect of the development of individuality itself. 

The mediaeval conceptions are not, therefore, in- 
significant and unmeaning. We are coming to under- 
stand that the development of the idea of individuality ' 
is not to be conceived of as something opposed to the 
conception of the solidarity or unity of human life, 
but as something which is unmeaning and sterile,! 
unless it is reconciled with it. The patristic and' 
mediaeval conception of property as requiring the rec- 
ognition of a common as well as an individual right, 
does really correspond with our experience and our 
principles, and we find in the interpretation of this, 

23 St. Thomas Aquinas, 8umma Theol. 2, 2 ; Qu. 66, 7, and Q. 32, 7. 



IN MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 139 

under the Christian terms of the brotherhood of men, 
the true gnide to our regulation of life. To us also 
it is clear that it is impossible to assent to the notion 
that there are unrestricted and absolute rights in 
property. It is true that the existence of private 
property is based upon the recognition and protection 
of the State, and this is not arbitrary or unreasoned, 
for it is related to something which has its roots in 
the character and needs of human nature; but this 
recognition is and must be determined in its form and 
extent by the experience of what is socially and in- 
dividually useful and beneficial. The Christian prin- 
ciple that a man holds his property not only for his 
own use, but as a trust for the good of the brother- 
hood, is not only valid in the abstract, but does in the 
long run remain the true guide to social regulation 
and action. 



yi 



rilE INFLUENCE OF THE KEFOEMATION 
ON IDEAS CONCERNING WEALTH AND 
PROPERTY 

BY 



H. a. WOOD, M.A. 



lATE FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBKIDQB 
LECTURES AT WOODBEOOKE SETTLEMENT, BIEMINGHAM 



141 



SUMMARY 

Among the various embodiments of the influence of the Reformation, 
Puritanism is selected for special study in this essay, on the ground 
that the Puritan temper most powerfully influenced the business world. 
The conceptions of the rights and duties of property which prevailed 
among the early Puritans {i.e. among those who during the century 
1560-1660 desired a national church more or less Presbyterian in char- 
acter) are subjected to a somewhat detailed analysis. Richard Baxter, 
who has with some truth been described as the last of these Puritans, 
is taken as representative of the best traditions of his school, and in 
his Christian Directory the emphasis is found to fall on the sacred 
character of the institution of property and on the responsibilities of 
personal stewardship. 

Incidentally, an attempt is made to question the close connection 
which is often assumed to exist between Puritanism and laissez-faire. 
This connection is shown not to be so direct and complete as is some- 
times supposed, at least so far as the earlier phases of the movement 
are concerned. In Baxter, neither the guiding principle of the common 
good nor the duty of government control is ignored. 

The developments of the Puritan tradition in the eighteenth century 
are next considered, together with the teachings which were under- 
emphasised or altogether forgotten in the main body of Protestant 
thought, but were welcomed by small groups and Sectarian movements. 

The essay concludes with a brief survey of the influence of the 
Evangelical Revival. 



142 



VI 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE EEFOEMATION 
ON IDEAS CONCEENING WEALTH AND 
PEOPERTY 

In any attempt to describe the social teacMng char- 
acteristic of the Eeformation it would seem natural 
to start with the work of John Wyclif. Both in point 
of form and in point of time Wyclif stands closest to 
the great Scholastics, and the transition from Scho- 
lastic to Eeformed attitudes of mind might best be 
studied in his writings. Yet even in tracing the in- 
fluence of reforming principles in England— and it is 
to English thought that the present study is almost 
entirely confined — the work of John Wyclif may prove 
not to be the true starting-point. One general con- 
sideration is of importance here. Though the Eef- 
ormation in England owed much to the Lollard 
movement, the great leaders from William Tyndale on- 
v/ards were not, strictly speaking, Wyclif 's followers. 
The great impetus towards reform came from the 
Continent, first from Luther and then from Calvin.^ 
Particularly in regard to property, the teaching of 
Wyclif found but little echo in the literature of the 
Tudor period. Even the suppression of the monas- 
teries, which might be considered as a direct appli- 

1 Compare D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and Amer- 
ica, where the interesting thesis is defended, that English history is 
not a record of steady progress, but of spasmodic response to foreign 
influence. In respect of the Reformation this is largely true. 

143 



144 PEOPEETY 

cation of that teaching, was seldom defended by an 
appeal to the Oxford scholar. Moreover, Troeltsch 
is surely right in classing LoUardy with the many 
sectarian movements that marked the close of the 
Middle Ages.^ Though in theory Wyclif demanded 
**a reform of Christendom, which should embrace the 
State and Society,'' yet when he sent forth poor 
priests who might not hold benefices, but who were to 
organize little groups on a voluntary basis, he prac- 
tically abandoned the idea of the Church as an organ- 
ization coextensive with civil society. Now Lutheran 
and Calvinist alike retained their hold on this latter 
idea, and similarly Anglicans and early Puritans, the 
English counterparts to Lutheran and Calvinist, 
agreed in striving for a Christian society in which 
State and Church should be coterminous, in opposi- 
tion to the sects which conceived the Church as the 
separated company of the saints. It is among these 
sects that the closest analogies with Wyclif 's doctrine 
of property are to be found. Consequently, any dis- 
cussion of his positions may be postponed until the 
main stream of Eeformation thought in England has 
been considered. 

Puritanism is rightly regarded as the most repre- 
sentative interpretation of Protestant morality among 
English-speaking peoples. The great contribution 
which the Puritan temper made to the industrial de- 
velopment of Great Britain is now generally recog- 
nized.^ In so far as our dominant ideas as to the 

2 See Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen, pp. 393- 
401. This masterly work came to my notice too late for this essay to 
derive full benefit from it. 

3 Compare the sketch of the influence of the Reformation in Marshall's 
Prijwiples of Economics, 5th ed., pp. 742-44, which sets the matter in 
its true perspective. The whole subject has been handled more in detail 
in the writings of Max Weber and Troeltsch, and still more recently 
by Hermann Levy in his book Economic Liberalism. 



AND THE EEFORMATION 145 

rights and duties of property rest on a religions basis 
or retain a religions sanction, they seem to be linked 
np chiefly with Puritan teaching. This reason alone 
might suffice to justify the selection of Puritanism for 
preferential treatment in this chapter. But the choice 
is the less irnddious inasmuch as there is no great gulf 
fixed between Anglican and Puritan, so far as moral 
instruction regarding wealth is concerned. Richard 
Baxter may be taken as representative of the early 
Puritans— the men who desired an established Church 
more or less modelled on Geneva. As a moralist, 
Baxter will be found to agree in the main with the 
English Reformers of the Tudor period, and also with 
such of his Anglican contemporaries as handled ethi- 
cal questions. Consequently, in its early phases, Puri- 
tanism on this side embodies most of what is distinc- 
tive of reformed opinion in England; while in its 
later stage it coalesced with the sects, some of which 
emphasized elements of Christian teaching which the 
more conservative reform movement was apt to ignore. 
A study of Puritanism will therefore bring out most 
easily the nature of the influence which the Reforma- 
tion exerted on ideas concerning wealth and property. 
The net effect of the Puritan movement on the use 
of wealth has often been sununed up as the assertion 
of greater individual liberty. Under Puritan influ- 
ence, it is alleged, the Christian was set free from 
the imperfect but perceptible control of the Catholic 
Church, and left to take his own line in regard to his 
wealth with little advice and less discipline. Puri- 
tanism is the religious root of laissez-faire. Some 
sentences from Archdeacon Cunningham set forth a 
verdict of this kind. Speaking of the seventeenth 
century he says: ** While there was a strong sense of 
the religious duty of insisting on hard and regular 



146 PEOPERTY 

work for the welfare, temporal and eternal, of the 
people themselves, there was a complete indifference 
to the need of laying down or enforcing any restric- 
tions as to the employment of money. Capital was 
much needed in England and still more in Scotland for 
developing the resources of the country . . . freedom 
for the formation and investment of capital seemed to 
the thoughtful city men of the seventeenth century, 
who were mostly in sympathy with Puritanism, the 
best remedy for the existing social evils. They were 
eager to get rid of the restrictions imposed by the 
Pope's laws, which it was possible to bring up in 
ecclesiastical courts, as well as to be free from the 
efforts of the King's Council to bring home to the em- 
ploying and mercantile classes their duty to the com- 
munity. The agitation against the interference of 
the Bishops in civil affairs and the triumph of Puri- 
tanism swept away all traces of any restriction or 
guidance in th^ employment of money. In so far as a 
stricter ecclesiastical discipline was aimed at or intro- 
duced it had regard to recreation and to immorality of 
other kinds, but was at no pains to interfere to check 
the action of the capitalist or to protect the labourer. 
From the time when the rise of Puritanism paralysed 
the action of the Church, and prevented her from 
maintaining the influence she had habitually exerted, 
it has been plausible to say that Christian teaching 
appeared to be brought to bear on the side of the rich 
and against the poor.''* 

The measure of truth contained in this interesting 
verdict is not hard to discern. The Puritan divines 
foUdVed Calvin in rejecting the Canon law against 
usury. Some of the early Reformers, like Hugh Lati- 

4 Tract on "The Moral Witness of the Church on the Investment of 
Money," pp. 25, 26. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 147 

mer and John Hooper, sided with Lnther in his de- 
nunciation of usnry and in his detestation of trade. 
Calvin and the Puritans found their chief support in 
the city men, and recognized interest as a legitimate 
source of gain. It is true that in this direction they 
broke down the fence of the Pope's laws. Perhaps 
it would be more true to say, they removed the rem- 
nants of a canonical hedge which already resembled a 
series of gaps. The prohibition of usury by the Canon 
law had become largely ineffective before the close 
of the Middle Ages. In the new commercial circum- 
stances of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its 
inherent unreasonableness was more evident. The in- 
consistency of the older position is exposed in the 
argument of Dr. W. Ames, a favourite moralist with 
Puritans, who says: *^If a man buys a farm and 
takes a rent for it, it is held just. But what is the 
difference if he lends the money to another to buy the 
farm and gets that other to pay interest instead of 
rent!"^ The Puritan only completed the inevitable 
revolt from the Canon law, by showing that the Canon 
law rested on a misapplication and a misunderstand- 
ing of the Mosaic law, and that the prohibition against 
usury had no ground in the gospel.® In addition to 
claiming the right to receive interest on capital, the 
Puritan spirit secured a further liberty in the use of 
capital through the opposition of Parliament to the 
monopolies set up by the early Stuarts. Since the 
leaders of that opposition were men of Puritan tem- 
per, and since one ostensible justification for such 
monopolies was the maintenance of the quality of the 
goods manufactured or sold, it is plausible to argue 

5 This passage is from Dr. Ames, De Conscientia (pub. 1631). With 
it compare Bullinger, Decades iii. p. 42. 

6 For this see Baxter's Christian Directory, Pt. IV. ch. xix. qu. xii. 



148 PKOPERTY 

that the Puritans were indifferent to the endeavour to 
maintain the quality of goods by the exercise of public 
authority. 

**The agitation against the interference of Bishops 
in civil affairs" was not a distinctive feature of Puri- 
tanism. When Laud secured the appointment of 
Bishop Juxon to the office of Lord Treasurer, he in- 
censed the nobility in general/ and established the one 
dogma on which Cavalier and Eoundhead were agreed 
at the Eestoration — the dogma which William Penn 
phrases thus: ^*Not many good days since ministers 
meddled so much in laymen's business.''^ Whether 
the intervention of the Bishops would have done much 
to keep moral considerations before merchants and 
manufacturers may be doubtful ; but the final negative 
given to Laud's policy of strengthening the Church 
by securing civil power, closed a channel through which 
the Church might have exerted a direct pressure. 

The course of events also tended to promote greater 
liberty for moneyed men, since, naturally enough, the 
disturbance of the Civil Wars destroyed the control of 
industry exercised by the Privy Council. A greater 
license having once been introduced, it was difficult to 
restore a system of supervision which had been work- 
ing more or less in the preceding century. 

Above and beyond all this, the Puritan movement is 
rightly associated with the growth of individual lib- 
erty. Many of its most distinguished leaders would 
lave indignantly repudiated the name of democrat, 
nd would have equally indignantly denounced the 

iresy of toleration. Yet Puritanism in its essence 

irvJit an increased sense of personal responsibility, 
ar^an assertion of the right of the conscience, under 

^ee Clarendon, History, Book i. $ 206. 

Penn, No Cross No Grown, Pt. I. ch. xii. § 8. (Words, ii. p. 141.) 



AND THE KEFOEMATION 149 

grace, to guide the individual apart from king or 
bishop. More particularly in its later stage when the - 
Independents became its chief representatives, the 
direct influence of Puritanism made for greater lib- 
erty in religion and politics : it was inevitable that the '^ 
men who won a greater recognition of self-direction in 
religion and in politics should also establish a fuller 
measure of economic freedom. The advocates of tol- 
eration became suspicious of Government interference 
in any direction. At the same time, the trend towards 
laissez-faire under the Commonwealth and the later 
Stuarts was at first accidental rather than designed; 
and if the action of the Church was paralysed after 
1640, the division of Church influence, rather than the 
direct tendency of Puritan modes of thought, must be 
held to have occasioned the lowered efficiency of the 
Church in her moral witness on the use of wealth.® 

Sweeping assertions to the effect that the rise of 
Puritanism removed all traces of restriction or guid- 
ance in the employment of money, and developed a 
public conscience which insisted on labour and sobriety 
for the poor, but made no attempt to check the action 
of the capitalist or to protect the labourer, are more 

9 Certain broader influences would faU to be considered in this con- 
nection, of which the chief would be the rationalist movement of thought 
so often described as the Illumination. Dr. Johannes Meyer in his 
pamphlet, Die soziale Naturrecht in der christlichen Kirche (p. 33 foil.), 
traces back to Grotius the tendency to derive social ideals from a law 
of nature or reason independent of the idea of God. This involved a 
separation between the sphere of religion and the sphere of natural 
law which sways the economic and political life of men. "If natural 
rights have nothing to do with religion, then religion has nothing to 
do with the soeial question." The Church lost control of business life 
because the eighteenth century developed a more secular way of regard- 
ing the whole subject. It must also be recognized that the Puritan 
distinction between ordinary moral virtue, "the ligament of human 
society," and grace, the essence of the religious life, suggested a similar 
separation of religion from economic life. For later Dissent, religion , 
and business tend to belong to different worlds, which produces the 
lowered commercial morality of Defoe's writings. Or if business is 
part of religion, it concerns the individual, not the magistrate. 



150 PEOPERTY 

difficult to justify. Neither the actions and plans of 
the Commonwealth administration nor the published 
opinions of Puritan leaders suggest any such indiffer- 
ence to public control or moral guidance in regard to 
wealth. 

In the first place, though the Puritan generally ad- 
mitted the right to take interest, he still regarded usury 
or excessive interest as a sin, and as a punishable sin. 
If usury is not expressly mentioned by John Knox in 
the Scotch Booh of Discipline y it is surely included in 
the phrase **oppressioun of the poore by exactionis, 
deceaving of thame in buying or selling be wrang met 
or measure, "^° which appears in a list of sins to be 
strictly visited with ecclesiastical punishments. In any 
case, Thomas Cartwright, who might have been the 
John Knox of England, expressly cites usury as a case 
for admonition and exclusion from the Sacraments, 
'*He that hath usurie proved against him, so that he 
lose his principal for taking above ten in the hundred," 
yet shall he also, for committing so hainous offence 
against God and his churche, to the very ill example of 
others, not be allowed to the Sacraments, until he shewe 
himselfe repentaunt for the faulte and study thereby 
to satisfie the congregation so offended by him."^^ So 
far from putting no restriction on the use of money, 
Cartwright here accepts the principle of legal limita- 
tion of interest, and would inflict church censures in 
addition to civil penalties. Nor is he singular in this 
respect. The later Puritans did not depart from this 
earlier standard. Under Cromwell, in 1651, an Act 
was passed prohibiting any person to take above six 
pounds for loan of one hundred pounds by the year. 

10 Hume Brown, John Knox, ii. p. 144 n. 

11 The maximum rate of interest legally established in the reign of 
Elizabeth. 

^^ Puritan Manifestoes, p. 120. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 151 

The Barebones Parliament devoted some attention to 
measures concerning bankruptcy, and Cromwell later 
put in force an ordinance for the relief of poor debtors. 
On the side of personal teaching, Puritan moralists are 
never tired of insisting on moderation in the terms on 
which money is lent. It is true that Baxter's counsels 
in his Christian Directory are somewhat vague, and he 
does not refer to any statutory limitation of interest, 
but he is clear that all usury is sinful when it is against 
either justice or charity. In particular, he holds that 
the Mosaic law was intended to protect the poor frojn 
oppressive contracts, and the Mosaic law is in effect 
binding still, being part of the Christian law of charity. 
This being so, usury is sinful, '^when you lend for in- 
crease where charity obligeth you to lend freely: even 
as it is a sin to lend expecting your own again, when 
charity obligeth you to give it. ' ' In the further speci- 
fication of cases of sinful usury, Baxter condemns the 
exaction of interest on business loans where the bor- 
rower cannot pay, and where the borrower is unable 
to secure a fair return for himself out of his enter- 
prise, if he pay the full interest. From Baxter 's point 
of view, interest could not be made the first charge upon 
industry. The same temper is apparent in the Puritan 
discussions of price. Baxter answers the question, 
'''How shall the worth of a commodity be judged of I" 
in the following manner: **1. When the law setteth a 
rate upon any thing (as on bread and drink with us) 
it must be observed. 2. If you go to the market, the 
market price is much to be observed. 3. If it be an 
equal contract, with one that is not in want, you may 
estimate your goods as they cost you, or are worth to 
you, though it be above the common price ; seeing the 
buyer is free to take or leave them. 4. But if that which 
yon have to sell be extraordinarily desirable or worth 



152 PEOPERTY 

to some one person more than to you or another man, 
yon mnst not make too great an advantage of his con- 
venience or desire : bnt be glad that you can pleasure 
him, upon equal, fair and honest terms. 5. If there 
be a secret worth in your commodity which the market 
will take no notice of (as it is usual in a horse), it is 
lawful for you to take according to that true worth if 
you can get it. But it is a false rule of them that think 
their commodity is worth as much as any one will), 
give.'' Baxter is here amplifying Dr. Ames, who also 
in respect of necessaries holds that the price deter- 
mined by public authority must be recognized as fmal. 
It is noteworthy, first that Baxter had no quarrel with 
the exercise of public authority to establish a fair price 
for necessaries, and second that he refused to sanction 
the sacrifice of moral consideration to the tender 
mercies of the forces of supply and demand. In both 
these positions, Baxter is thoroughly normal. Both 
Puritan and Anglican, in the seventeenth century, 
agreed on these points. In view of the first, we may 
conjecture that if the Puritans objected to the rule of 
Bishops exercised in the Star Chamber and the Court 
of High Commission, or if they disliked the control of 
the King's Council it was not because they were un- 
willing to see moral considerations enforced on moneyed 
men by public authority ; it was rather that they denied 
to King and Bishop a power of control which they held 
belonged to Parliament. The Puritan attitude on a 
constitutional issue cannot be twisted into an endorse- 
ment of economic laissez-faire. Nor was there any 
great breach in the tradition of national control of 
industry, in the time of the Commonwealth.^^ 

13 Hermann Levy maintains the contrary view. He endorses Arch- 
deacon Cunningham's verdict on Puritanism, and builds his case on the 
fact, demonstrated by Miss Leonard ( in her History of the English Poor 
Law), that poor relief was best administered during the personal rule 



I AND THE REFORMATION 153 

The attitude of Puritanism towards monopolies, 
both in theory and practice, is likewise in line with 

of Charles I., when the pressure of the Privy Council forced a common 
policy on the country, and insisted on the raising of local stocks to 
give work to the unemployed. After the confusion of the Civil War, 
these activities and this policy of the Privy Council were never fully 
resumed, and when in 1704 Sir Humphrey Mackworth introduced a 
Bill for employing the poor, it was practically killed by the vigorous 
pamphlet, "Giving Alms, no charity," from the pen of the Noncon- 
formist Defoe. This abandonment of the early policy Levy attributes 
in the main to the anti-social tendency of Puritanism. The system set 
up by Charles I. was, under the Commonwealth, "not merely neglected, 
but it is hardly too much to say, abolished.*' The ruling classes' views 
of poverty had changed. "The victory of Puritanism brought with it 
the apotheosis of work," and want of work meant want of grace (see 
Econor.iic Liberalism, ch. vi., esp. pp. 73, 77, and p. 86 n.). 

I dissent almost entirely from this plausible presentation of the facts, 
on the following grounds :^ — 

(1) The Puritans did not dislike the Poor Law policy of the Privy 
Council. Miss Leonard [cyp. cit. p. 297), referring to the Privy Coun- 
cil orders in the time of Charles L, says: "The substance of the orders, 
however, does not appear to have created opposition. Men of both 
sides sent in their reports to the Privy Council, and Tnore energetic 
medsures to execute the Poor Law were taJc&tv in the Puritan counties 
\of the east than in any other part of England." 

(2) Whatever happened tp administrative machinery during the 
Commonwealth, the general aim adopted by the Privy Council was not 
only not abandoned; it was expressly realSrmed. "Aii Act for Advanc- 
ing and Regulating the Trade of this Commonwealth" was passed in 
August 1650, and according to the preamble, passed "to the end that 
ye poore people of this land may he set on vyork and their Familiiea 
preserved from Beggary and Ruine . . . and no occasion left either for 
Idleness or Poverty." The phrase "to set the poore on work" is the 
regular phrase for the relief of the unemployed, and it links the aim 
of the Commonwealth government with the best traditions of the Privy 
Council. If work was no longer provided officially, it was either be- 
cause the Government lacked the energy and machinery for the purpose, 
or because the development of trade after the abolition of monopolies 
made such direct provision unnecessary., It was certainly not due to 
an anti- social tendency which denied any responsibility of the State for 
unemployment. 

(3) Though Defoe is not altogether typical even of later Noncon- 
formity, it is certainly true that Dissent tended to embrace an extreme 
form of Individualism. But the identification of the unemployed with 
the idle was not, even for Defoe, a theoretical deduction from the Puritan 
emphasis on work; it was grounded on what he actually saw of the 
demoralization of the people under the later Stuarts. The Puritan cer- 
tainly took a harsh view of idleness, especially among the upper classes; 
but he did not confuse idleness, and unemployment as Dr. Levy suggests, 
until the social conditions of the eighteenth century lent some colour 
to the confusion. It is a mistake to regard the Puritan doctrine of 
work as in itself a factor in changing Poor Law administration. 



154 PEOPERTY 

Baxter's repudiation of the principle of getting all 
yon can for yonr goods/* The opposition to artificial 
monopolies was based on the perception of their eco^ 
nomic wastefulness. Sir John Eliot takes his stand 
upon this principle. But in the case of natural monop- 
olies, the Puritan declared it to be a sin for the indi- 
vidual to press to the full accidental or circumstantial 
advantages in bargaining; and they were ready to 
invoke and use the power of the State to suppress 
such monopoly gains and punish those who sought 
them. Thus, in the first year of the Commonwealth, 
the Government attorney was directed to prosecute a 
corn monopolist at Ipswich, **so that the poor people ; 
may see that care is taken of them in time of dearth." 
Later in the same year, a warrant was issued against 
Samuel Truelove of Wapping, and Mr. Bucknell, 
Shipmaster, *Ho attend the Council to answer as to a 
combination for raising the price of coals. ' ' This step 
was followed by the appointment of a committee *Ho 
consider how the price of coal for the poor may be 
brought down, to confer with the Lord Mayor and 
prepare an Act. ' ' ^^ The general principle guiding 
such action is laid down in a memorable sentence in 
Cromwell's famous despatch to Parliament concerning 
Dunbar fight: ^^Be pleased to reform the abuses of all 
professions : and if there be any one that makes many 
poor to make a few rich, that suits not a Common- j 
wealth. "^^ Cromwell was probably thinking of law- 
yers in the first instance, but the Puritan did not. 

14 It is interesting to observe that the protest against monopolies, , 
combined with a protest against enclosures and bad judicial procedure, , 
is already voiced in Martin Bucer's De regno Christi. Bucer, who i 
taught in Cambridge in the time of Edward VI., may be regarded as i 
the founder of English Calvinism. See Troeltsch, op. cit. p. 776 n. 

15 State Papers, Domestic, 1649. 

16 Carlyle's Letters of Cromwell, ed. Lomas, ii, p. 108. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 155 

intend any trade or profession to ignore the common 
good. " 

^- To estimate arigM the character of Eeformed and 
Puritan teaching, it is necessary to consider some 
broader aspects of the subject. In developing a doc- 
trine of property, the Eeformers started from the 
Eighth Commandment.^^ ^^By this commandment, the 
proper owning of peculiar substance is lawfully or- 
dairxed and firmly established. The Lord forbiddeth 
theft : therefore He ordaineth and confirmeth the 
proper o^^ming of worldly riches. For what canst 
thou steal, if all things be common to all men? For 
tlion hast stolen thine own and not another man's, if 
thou takest from another that which he hath. But 
God forbiddeth theft : and therefore, by the making of 
this law, He confirmeth the proper possession of pecu- 
liar goods. ' ' This representative statement from Bul- 
linger may be supplemented by Baxter's discussion of 
the question, *^ Is it a sin for a man to steal in absolute 
necessity, when it is merely to save his life?" Baxter 
cites two opposing doctrines, first that of Dr. Ames 
who defends the principle ** omnia fieri communia in 

17 The sensitiveness of the Puritan conscience on the subject of monop- 
olies may be further illustrated from the Memoirs of William KiflSn, a 
wealthy Baptist merchant in the time of Charles II. In a chapter on 
his business adventures he is most anxious to remove the aspersion that 
he raised his estate by obtaining orders to bring in prohibited goods. He 
had never taken favours from Government! See Orme's Life of Kiffin, 
pp. 23, 24. 

18 Patristic and mediaeval writers usually begin their discussion of 
property with an appeal to the concept of natural law, and in the Middle 
Ages at least opinion varies as to whether ownership is a natural right 
or not. (See the preceding Essay.) The Eeformers did not altogether 
lose sight of natural law, and like earlier Christian thinkers, they 
connected the Decalogue with natural law. But to them the Decalogue 
is the divine confirmation and interpretation of natural law. From 
this conviction they derived a readier popular appeal. The law of 
Nature was always something of an abstraction. In starting from the 
Decalogue, the Reformers based the institution of property on a direct 
spoken word of God. 



156 PEOPERTY i 

extrema necessitate,"^® and then that of the more rig-- 
orous legalists who regard the prohibition of theft ass 
absolute, because no exception is hinted at in the 5 
Decalogue. Without accepting the latter view in its; 
entirety, Baxter clearly leans towards it. He holds ; 
that *' whensoever the preservation of the life of the; 
taker is not in open probability like to be more ser- 
viceable to the common good, than the violation of the 
right of propriety will be hurtful, the taking of another 
man's goods is sinful, though it be only to save the 
taker's life." Baxter further maintains that **in ordi- 
nary cases, the saving of a man's life will not do soi 
much good, as his stealing will do hurt." He thus; 
appeals to the principle of the common good to nega- 
tive the plea **a man must live," and also to modify 
or supplement the absolute right of ownership which 
many based on the Decalogue. 

The early Reformers were led to insist on the right 
of private property the more earnestly, in order to 
clear their movement of the taint of Anabaptism. The 
story of Miinster made these revolutionary Commu- 
nists objects of fear. It was felt to be necessary to 
disavow their doctrine in the Elizabethan Articles of 
Religion; and accordingly Article 38 asserts that ^Hhe 
Riches and Goods of Christians are not common as , 
touching the right, title, and possession of the same, , 
as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast." The Puri- 
tans were obliged to clear themselves of the same 
suspicion. In the controversies of the time of Eliza- 
beth, Whitgift and Hooker both attacked their op- 
ponents' position as tending to the anarchy of the 
Anabaptists. Later on, the Presbyterians and consti- 
tutional sectaries had to repudiate the extravagancies 
of the Levellers. Thus from similar motives English 

19 Cf. preceding Essay, p. 138. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 157 

Eeformers, Anglican and Puritan alike, fonnd it de- 
sirable to protest their attachment to the principle of 
private property. They were anxious not to be taken 
for social revolutionaries. 

Another factor in determining the Reformers' atti- 
tude towards wealthy was the discrediting of voluntary 
poverty by the failure of the friar and the monk. The 
reaction from the conventional praise of poverty led 
the Reformer and the Puritan after him to insist on 
the blessing of wealth. Wealth and poverty come of 
God's gifts, and either is to be accepted as from Him. 
The seventeenth-century moralists do not ignore the 
sjjiritual and moral dangers of wealth. Indeed they 
are most anxious to direct the man of means in the 
employment of his money. But they do regard the 
possession of wealth as something ordained of God, 
and in consequence they take up a conservative atti- 
tude towards class distinctions and class standards 
of living. They do not anticipate a filling-in of the 
chasm between^rich and poor, or even a closer approx- 
imation between the two sides of the chasm. It is 
assumed to be a natural and divine order that some are 
placed in a position to give alms and others in the 
necessity of receiving them. Differences in wealth are 
incidental to God's education of mankind. ** Riches 
be chanceable unto us, but not unto God: for God 
knoweth w^hen and to whom He will give them, or take 
them away again." ^^ In this connection it is interest- 
ing to notice how Baxter, in the midst of many wise 
cautions against prodigality, yet reserves the expen- 
diture necessary for the maintenance of class distinc- 
tions. The answer to the question, **What may be 
accounted prodigality in the costliness of apparel?" 
begins with the sentence, **Not that which is only for 

20 Latimer, i. 478, Parker Society. 



158 PEOPEETY 

a due distinction of superiors from inferiors, or which 
is needful to keep up the vulgar's reverence to magis- 
trates."^^ When, a few pages later, Baxter discusses 
how far the rich may spend on themselves while the 
poor suffer want, he again rests on the validity of 
certain social distinctions, for *4t must be confessed 
that some persons may be of so much worth and use 
to the commonwealth (as kings and magistrates) and 
some of so little that the maintaining of the honour and 
success of the former may be more necessary than 
the saving of the lives of the latter. But take heed 
lest pride or cruelty teach you to misunderstand this 
or abuse it for yourselves.'' In a sermon on the use^ 
of wealth, Bullinger had set forth the same principle. 
* * One state of life and a greater port becometh a magis 
trate; when another countenance and a lower sail 
beseemeth a private person. But in these cases let 
every man consider what necessity requireth, not what 
lust and rioting will egg him unto. Let him think with 
himself, what is seemly and unseemly for one of his 
degree."" 

Starting from the divine sanction attaching to pri- 
vate property, to differences in the possession of 
wealth, and to the resultant social order, the main 
stream of Protestant thought could not avoid the prob- 
lem of the use of wealth. If men are not to surrender 
their wealth, how are they to make use of it! Here 
the Eeformation stressed the religious worth of ordi- 
nary callings, and sought guidance in the conception 
of stewardship. Since wealth is God's gift, men are 
accountable to God for their use of it. They cannot 

21 Baxter, Christian Directory, Pt. IV. chap. xxi. 

22 Bullinger, Decades, iii. p. 55. The Canon law was much less con- 
siderate towards this kind of expenditure. See the preceding Essay, and 
the same writer's Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, vol. ii. p. 
140 f. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 159 

evade their responsibility. They must face it. Differ- 
ences of wealth and of social vocation are of God's 
designing, and men mnst live soberly and godly in that 
state of life to which it shall please God to call them. 
They must also remember always the strict and soleron 
account which mnst be rendered in the day of judg- 
ment. 

However inadequate the idea of stewardship may 

(be as a standard of social obligation, and however 
readily it may have degenerated into cant later on, it 
Jis to the credit of Puritanism that it succeeded in per- 
j'suading many to take their stewardship seriously. In 
I some instances it resulted in a morbid introspection, 
jbut more broadly it stimulated a healthy habit of self- 
j examination, strengthened the power of self-control 

I and the sense of personal responsibility. Men took 
|more thorough stock of themselves, and the keeping 

of accounts became a religious duty— a not insignifi- 
cant fact. 

Baxter emphasizes the need of reflection in the dis- 
|posai of ourselves and our resources. *^ Prudence is 
exceeding necessary in doing good, that you may dis- 
cern good from evil, discerning the season and measure 
and manner and among divers duties, which must be 

II preferred. " And again, *'in doing good prefer the 
good of many to the good of the few. Prefer a dura- 
ble good that will extend to posterity, before a short 
and transitory good.'' This is obvious common sense 
enough, but it is part of the Puritan's contribution to 
progress that he sanctified common sense. The sig- 
nificance of Baxter's position may be seen when he 
deprecates a close dependence on the momentary in- 
spiration of the individual conscience, and urges his 
readers to trust rather to general rules, and adds, 
^* Present prudence and sincerity will do most." Puri- 



160 PEOPERTY I 

tanism gave a religious impetus to what Sombart calls^, 
** Economic Rationalism," by making everything mat-! 
ter of conscience, and so of calculation.^^ 

In keeping with the central conception of steward- 
ship, great emphasis was laid on the duty of finding aii 
useful employment for one's self. ^* Especially be sure^ 
that you live not out of a calling, that is, such a stated I 
course of employment in which you may be best ser- 
viceable to God. Disability is indeed an irresistible; 
impediment. Otherwise no man must either live idly 
or content hmself with doing some little charres as aj 
recreation or on the by; but every one that is able,, 
must be statedly and ordinarily employed in such work : 
as is serviceable to God and the common good."^* It. 
was not only or chiefly in the case of the poor that) 
Puritanism insisted on the religious duty of hard and 
regular work. In the choice of work, ^Ht is no sin hut 
a duty, to labour not only for labour sake, formally 
resting in the act done, but for that honest increase 
and provision which is the end of our labour; and 
therefore to choose a gainful calling rather than an- 
other, that we may be able to do good and relieve the 
poor."^^ Here too Baxter sets his seal to economic 
rationalism! The close connection between the Puri- 
tan ethic of prudence and the spirit of capitalism is 
undeniable. A further point of connection is best illus- 
trated from one of Wesley's sermons. His first coun- 
sel about riches (which in spirit must be judged by its 
sequel **give all you can") is: **Gain all you can"; 
and under that head, he emphasizes the duty of im- 
proving the methods of industry. '*Gain all you can, 
by common sense, by using in your business all the 

23 Hobson, Evolution of Capitalism, p. 22. 

24 Baxter, Christio/ti Directory, Pt. I. chap. iii. grand direction x. 

25 Baxter, Christian Directory, Pt. IV. chap. xxi. For this motive in 
Early Christianity see Essay IV. p. 101. 



AND THE REFORMATION 161 

understanding which God has given yon. It is amaz- 
ing to observe how few do this ; how men rnn on in the 
same dnll track with their forefathers. But whatever 
they do who know not God, this is no rule for you. 
It is a shame for a Christian not to improve upon 
tJieMy in whatever he takes in hand. You should be 
continually learning from the experience of others, 
or from your own experience, reading and reflection, 
to do everything you have to do better to-day than you 
did 3^esterday. And see that you practise whatever 
you learn ; that you make the best of all that is in your 
hand." ^^ It would be difficult to imagine a more thor- 
ough endorsement of the temper which has made 
modern industry. 

This insistence on orderly and enlightened industry 
in the making of money was naturally combined with 
the advocacy of carefulness in the spending of it. The 
austerity of the Puritan has been exaggerated. It is 
true he did not f uUy share Luther 's faith in the right- 
eousness of good living, Luther's breezy belief in the 
spiritual healthiness of banter and wine. Yet I do 
not think the true Puritan would have quarrelled with 
BuUinger's view that the necessity which is supplied 
by worldly goods does not exclude moderate pleasures. 
^*For the Lord hath in no place forbidden mirth, joy 
and the sweet use of wealth, so far forth that nothing 
be done undecently, unthankfully or unrighteously.''^^ 
It is sometimes forgotten thsiL^ Allegro was written 
by a Puritan. Many who scorn Puritanism as strait- 
laced could hardly deny that the Puritan protests 
against some of the recreations of the sixteenth or 
seventeenth centuries were obvious in the interests 
of decency. In many instances the Puritan was not 

26 Wesley, Sermon 50, On the Use of Money. 
27 BuUinger, Decades, iii. p. 55. 



162 PEOPERTY 

so much a fanatical kill- joy as the champion of good 
taste. Thus it appears that the **sad" colours in dress 
associated with Puritans in the States, were not monot- 
onous browns and greys, but just the sober shades 
which a sound aesthetic instinct preferred to the louder 
colours which were then fashionable.^^ For all that, 
there was a strong ascetic element in the Puritan 
movement. The Calvinist was more austere than the 
Lutheran, and the tendency deepened, for the Quaker 
was more austere than the Calvinist. Baxter laughs 
at the Quaker simplicity which rejects ribbons and 
buttons ! And beyond a doubt, when the life-blood of 
Puritanism poured into the veins of the struggling 
Nonconformist bodies, there was a narrowing just on 
this side. The cleft made in English Christianity at 
the Restoration, by the Act of Uniformity, brought it 
about that to the heirs of Puritanism certain pleasures 
seemed irretrievably sinful just because they were 
characteristic of those classes of society whose world- 
liness was most apparent to Nonconformist eyes, and 
with whom Nonconformists came but little into sym- 
pathetic contact. Still even the original Puritan move-^ 
ment pruned men's expenditure severely. If it never 
meant to remove simple pleasures (particularly the 
pleasures of home, which it manifestly deepened), and 
if at times it even left the human heart inadequately 
warned of the snare of creature comforts, at least it 
cut off careless, luxurious, and dissipating outlay. The 
Puritan was compelled to think about the way he spent 
his money, and he was led to seek quieter pleasures 
and to purchase more enduring objects of delight than 
the conventional standards of his day suggested. Yet 
here too we can trace how religion nourished, if it did 
not originate, the outlook characteristic of capitalism. 

28 See Maurice Low, The American People. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 163 

Karl Marx says somewliere that ^Hhe capitalist brands 
all consumption as a sin against his function." He 
would have uttered a simpler and profounder truth 
if he had omitted the last three words. Indeed the 
three words in question are only part of the bad habit 
of regarding men always from their place in the proc- 
ess of production — the prejudice of supposing men's 
character to be determined by their economic function, 
v/hich forms the mainstay of Marxian philosophy. 
The truth surely is that the capitalist class was largely 
created by men who branded ail careless consumption 
as a sin. The Puritan conception of stewardship, and 
the Puritan condemnation of worldly living, will be 
found to have contributed more to the morale of capi- 
talism than either the love of gain or any conscious 
adaptation of a class to their place in the productive 
process. 

Before concluding this brief survey, it is necessary 
to devote a few lines to two other points, viz., the 
denunciation of oppressive methods of making money, 
and the obligation to charity and good works. There 
is nothing very novel in Baxter's treatment of these 
topics. He has much to say of the relation of land- 
lord and tenant— not because he has the Puritan bias 
in favour of traders, but because he knew more about 
this than about industrial employment. He warns men 
against imposing oppressive rents, against oppressing 
labourers by withholding wages, and against imposing 
oppressive conditions of labour, especially conditions 
which render men unfit for or careless of their relig- 
ious duties. Indeed it may safely be assumed that 
Christian opinion generally in the seventeenth century 
would have endorsed the principle of the Trades- 
Boards Act. That principle is stated in so many words 
by Jeremy Taylor when he accepts as fair price *Hhat 



^ 



164 PROPEKTY 

which is established in the fame and common accounts 
of the wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that 
manufacture or commodity. ' ' ^^ If the Puritan did 
not take adequate steps to protect labour legally, and 
if he trusted too much to the good-nature of landlord 
and employer, he was by no means indifferent to moral 
considerations in relation to wages and conditions of 
employment. 

On the side of charitable activities and good works, 
the Eeformers were concerned to urge their necessity 
and importance, without admitting their merit. Yet 
perhaps the traditional doctrine of the merit of good 
works still colours in a measure Protestant discussions 
of charity. The following are the motives to charity 
on which Baxter lays stress. Doing good doth make 
us most like to God : consequently it is an honourable 
employment ; it makes us pleasing and amiable to God, 
and profitable to men, not only to others, but also to 
ourselves, for we are members one of another. There 
is, moreover, a singular delight in doing good, and 
good works are a comfortable evidence that faith is 
sincere. We owe so much to God that it doubles our 
obligation to do good to others. Then we are depend- 
ent on others and we should recognize the unity of the 
body social. Good works are much to the honour of 
religion, are often commended in the Scripture, and 
are the standard by which God will judge us. Baxter 's 
catalogue of desirable works of charity is also of inter- 
est. He puts first, with an insight beyond his age, 
the work of advancing the conversion of the heathen. 
The promotion of church unity, and of a well-educated 
ministry at home, is urged as next in importance. 
After these he mentions the establishing of free schools 
in populous and ignorant places, the providing of 

29 Eohf Living, chap. iii. see. 3, par. 4. 



AND THE EEFORMATION 165 

higher education for those who are worth it but too 
poor to command it, the distribution of sound religious 
literature among the poor, apprenticing poor children 
wisely, relieving the necessities of the ejected min- 
isters, advancing small stocks to set up suitable young 
tradesmen, the remission of rent by landlords to en- 
courage their tenants to learn catechisms, and finally 
general poor relief. Not only in this section but 
throughout Baxter lays great stress on the service of 
the State and on the necessity of studying public 
utility. 

The Puritan position may be summed up as follows : 
Private property rests on the Decalogue, and the right 
of this institution possesses an inviolable and divine 
sanction. Differences in wealth and in social status 
are of God's ordering, and belong to the permanent 
structure of society. Riches, being God's gift, are in 
their nature a blessing, and are not lightly to be aban- 
doned by the individual, though they bring grave temp- 
tations and dangers with them. Since riches are God's 
gift, no man is absolute owner: all men are God's 
stewards and must render an account of their steward- 
ship. Economic wastefulness is therefore necessarily 
sinful. Men must make the most of themselves and 
their resources. No one has any right to be idle or 
careless. It is likewise a duty to use and spend money 
profitably, not wasting it in dicing and worldly pleas- 
ures of that kind. In making money, a man must 
beware of oppression : in spending it, he must seek for 
works of lasting utility to mankind and the Common- 
wealth. It is sinful for any one to press to the full 
the economic and social advantages of his position, and 
it is the recognized duty of the public authority to fix 
a fair price for necessaries and to restrain monopo- 
lists. A rightly organized Christian Church would 



166 PEOPERTY 

enforce moral considerations on the owners of wealth, 
by withholding the sacrament from heinous of- 
fenders. 

The position, so outlined, is not, of course, peculiarly 
Puritan. An examination of the writings of Jeremy 
Taylor, or of such a treatise as The Whole Duty of 
Man, would have provided equally satisfactory illus- 
trations of the main points. Jeremy Taylor, con- 
tinuing the great traditions of Hooker, emancipated 
himself from over-great reverence to the law of Moses, 
He realized that ** amongst us there are or have been; 
a good many Old Testament Divines, whose Doctrine 
and manner of talk and arguments and practices have 1 
too much squinted towards Moses." This defect of 
Puritanism the great Anglicans avoided; but so far 
as the use of wealth was concerned, Puritan and 
Anglican were practically agreed as to their standards 
of Christian duty. 

It would scarcely be fair to criticize the Puritan 
outlook because it failed to anticipate the social evils 
of the industrial revolution, though it would deserve 
censure if, by its concentration on individual duty, it 
rendered men blind to the necessity of common action, 
and perhaps a little callous towards the evils in ques- 
tion. Undoubtedly later Puritanism had this latter 
effect, though other factors of eighteenth-century life 
also co-operated to produce it. Many good men of the 
Puritan stock were, and perhaps are to-day, attached 
obstinately to the principle of laissez-faire, because a 
rooted trust in individual responsibility and self-help^ 
is part of their religious inheritance. In this, Puri- 
tanism displays the defects of its qualities. Such an 
over-emphasis compels us to ask what modifications 
have been made in the Puritan outlook by changing 



AND THE EEFORMATION 167 

social conditions, and wliat elements of Eeformation 
teaching have been inadequately represented in it. 

Clearly it was from the first open to any body of 
Christians who started from the broad principles of j^ 
the Protestant ethic to advance beyond others by ad- 
hering to one or two definite applications of those 
principles. The advance which the Quaker claimed to 
make on the Puritan was largely of this character. 
While the Puritan condemned lavish expenditure in 
general, the Quaker protested against ribbons, but- 
tonSj and other particular superfluities. While Baxter 
is nicely balancing the honour of the magistrate against 
the life of the beggar, Fox is urging magistrates and 
others to lay aside furs and gold ohains in order to 
relieve the necessitous who crowd the streets of Lon- 
don. While the Puritan is commanding honesty in 
bargaining, and is discussing cases of conscience in 
regard to the pricing and describing of goods, the 
Quaker is roundly denouncing all the petty falsehood 
of business, bidding men have done with all pretended 
politeness and act on the simple principle of **So say 
and so do.'' 

There are many attempts, like that of the Quakers, 
to give a more rigorous and definite application to the 
coimnon standpoint. Perhaps the chief direction in 
which later religious teachers modified the tradition 
of the seventeenth century is to be found in the de- 
mand for a greater asceticism on the part of the rich. 
It was felt on the one hand that the earlier moralists 
had underrated the danger of wealth and good living, 
and on the other hand, the problem of poverty became 
more urgent, especially towards the latter half of the 
eighteenth century. In consequence, some of the most 
conspicuous teachers of that age no longer display the 
Puritan tenderness towards class standards of com- 



168 PEOPERTY 

fort. Both William Law and John Wesley expected 
Christian men to reduce their personal expenditure to 
a minimum, almost to live as do the poor. Law's ideal 
Christian lady divides her fortune ** betwixt herself 
and several other poor people, and she has only her 
part of relief in it. She thinks it the same folly to 
indulge herself in needless vain expenses, as to give 
to other people to spend in the «ame way. Therefore 
as she wiU not give a poor man money to go see a 
puppet show, neither will she allow herself any to 
spend in the same manner : thinking it very proper to 
be as wise herself as she expects poor men should be/^ 
** Excepting her victuals, she never spent near ten 
pound a year upon herself. . . . She has but one rule 
that she observes in her dress, to be always clean and 
in the cheapest things.'' ^^ Law's standard of living 
may be too severe: both Miranda and the poor might 
be allowed go see the puppet show sometimes! But 
at least Law does not concede to the rich an indulgence 
he denies to the poor. The distinctive thing is the 
assumption that the Christian must practise the self- 
denial he expects in the poor. John Wesley repeats 
Law's message. In his Journal he commends a gentle- 
man who cut down his personal expenditure to twenty- 
eight pounds a year, so that he had nearly twenty 
pounds to return to God in the poor.^^ Wesley's own 
practice approximated to this standard. Of his three 
directions for the use of money, **Gain all you can," 
**Save all you can," *^Give all you can," the third was 
the most important, supplying the motive and justifi- 
cation for the first two. Wesley urged his followers 
to imitate Quaker simplicity, while avoiding the snare 
of Quaker expensiveness. For by that time the prac- 

30 Law, Serious Call, chap. viii. 
siTlie Journal, vol. iii. pp. 312-13, in Everyman's Library. 



AND THE REFORMATION 169 

tice of the simple life had become a costly thing ! **Let 
me see, before I die, a Methodist congregation full as 
plain dressed as a Quaker congregation. Only be more 
consistent with yourselves. Let your dress be cheap 
as well as plain : otherwise you do but trifle with Grod 
and me and your own souls. I pray, let there be no 
costly silks among you, how grave soever they may 
be." ^^ Wesley was aware of the natural tendency of 
a rising income to enlarge men ^s ideas of what was due 
to themselves. He knew and denounced the plea that 
a larger revenue justifies increased expenditure. ' * Per- 
haps you say you can now afford the expense. This 
is the quintessence of nonsense. Who gave you this 
addition to your fortune, or (to speak properly) who 
lent it to you? To speak more properly still, who 
lodged it for a time in your hands as His stewards? 
. . . This affording to rob God is the very cant of 
helL"^^ 

Yet Law and Wesley are still dominated by the 
central interest of Protestantism — the individuaPs 
relation to God. The disposal of property is primarily 
a question between the individual owner and God, 
though God's call has ever in view the wider common 
good. The effect of one's conduct on one's hope of 
salvation is the main consideration both in Law's Seri- 
ous Gall and in Wesley's Sermons, Wesley indeed con- 
demns unhealthy and hazardous occupations, and also 
trades which produce social evil. He does not spare 
the liquor traffic. All who sell spirituous liquors **in 
the common way to any that will buy, are poisoners 
general. They murder His Majesty's subjects by 
wholesale, neither does their eye pity or spare. They 
drive them to hell, like sheep. . . . And what is their 
gain! Is it not the blood of these men?"^* But, 

32 Sermon 88. 83 Sermon 126. a* Sermon 60. 



170 PEOPERTY 

naturally enough, Wesley is concerned to emphasize 
the danger to the individual Christian of engaging in 
such trades. A man imperils his own salvation by 
selling liquor. This is still the uppermost thought. 
Wesley has something to say of dangerous trades — a 
subject on which Baxter had been practically silent, 
because its significance belongs to the eighteenth cen- 
tury. But the standpoint from which Wesley comes 
at the subject is governed by the same central interest 
as that wiiich guides the Christian Directory. Per- 
haps, in consequence, Wesley *^ heralds the temperance 
agitation, but misses the deeper aspects of the prob- 
lem." 

When we turn our attention to the sects which 
skirmish on the outskirts of Puritanism — ^its prede- 
cessors, its critics and its allies — ^we are more certainly 
in a new atmosphere, an atmosphere with fresh and 
invigorating elements in it, which are inadequately 
represented in the main current of Protestant thought. 
Lollards, Anabaptists, Familists, Levellers, Fifth Mon- 
archy men and, to some extent, Quakers, have at least . 
this in common, that they stand for and keep alive an j 
element of social hope for the kingdom of God on earth | 
which does not appeal to the more conservative Puri> 
tan. Sometimes this hope becomes an apocalyptic fa- 
naticism, as in the case of the Anabaptists at Miinster 
or of the Fifth Monarchy men at the Restoration. But 
with all their extravagancies and impracticabilities ; 
these men preserve the belief in a new social order, 
the conviction that society is to be remodelled as a 
Christian brotherhood. The Puritan tended to post- 
pone the New Jerusalem to another world, regarding 
this world as a school of probation that offers but, 
limited possibilities of progress, or at the most hei 
looked for such an approximation to the ideal as was 3 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 171 

apparently possible within the lines of the existing 
social organization. Progress will lie in a further 
carrying ont of the voluminous advice contained in the 
Christian Directory, But perhaps this would hardly 
build a very satisfactory Jerusalem **in England's 
green and pleasant land'M There is something want- 
ing which is at least vaguely present in the followers 
of Major-Greneral Harrison and John Lilburne, who 
felt that under the Commonwealth they were not yet 
at rest, had not yet enjoyed or seen enough to accom- 
plish the ends of God» Surely **the bitter pangs and 
throbs [of the Civil War] would make way for that 
long expected birth of peace, freedom and happiness, 
both to the souls and bodies of the Lord's people: and 
although we do not see it fully brought forth, yet we 
do not despair, but in God's due time, it shall be so." ^^ 
In different ways, the groups under discussion set out 
to begin forthwith the new way of living which they 
felt Christianity demanded. They very imperfectly 
realized the nature of their quest. The increase both 
in material resources and in economic knowledge has 
since rekindled part of their hope in a more sober 
form. But they deserve to be remembered for bearing 
witness to the revolutionary character of the Christian 
ideal of society. 

The Puritan attitude, then, was marked by the ab- 
sence of any emphatic social hope. Two other defects, 
or, to use a neutral word, omissions, call for comment. 
In the first place, the Puritan seldom attached much 
weight to the claim which the poor can make on the 
rich in virtue of the social character of all wealth. As 
we have seen, when Baxter enumerates motives for 
charity, he dwells on the likeness of the charitable man 
to God, on the pleasant emotional effects to one's self 

35 Simpkinson, Major-General Harrison, p. 177. 



172 PEOPERTY 

of charitable action, on the assurance to faith and so) 
on. He does indeed touch on our social interdepen-- 
dence, but he has no clear perception and certainly / 
no clear statement of any indebtedness of the rich to) 
the poor. Among the great English Eeformers, Hughi 
Latimer, so far as I know, stands almost alone ini! 
recognizing this truth. If he is not solitary in recog--| 
nizing the truth itself, the quaint way in which he^l 
establishes it must, I think, be peculiar to him! While ^ 
denying that the poor man has any right to take money 
away from the rich man, he «ays, in his fifth sermon i 
on the Lord's Prayer: **But yet the poor man hathi 
title to the rich man's goods: so that the rich mam 
ought to let the poor man have part of his riches to > 
help and to comfort him withal." Latimer proceeds > 
to drive this home in the following quaint argument.. 
^^But here I must ask you rich men a question. How 
chanceth it you have your riches? 'We have them of 
God, ' you will say. But by what means have you them ! ? 
*By prayer,' you will say. 'We pray for them unto* 
God and He giveth us the same. ' But I pray you tell I 
me, what do other men which are not rich? Pray they 
not as well as you do? *Yes,' you must say; for youi 
cannot deny it. Then it appeareth that you have your • 
riches not through your own prayers only, but other 
men help you to pray for them: for they say as well,, 
* Our Father, give us this day our daily bread, ' as you i 
do : and peradventure they be better than you be and 1 
God heareth their prayer sooner than yours. And so) 
it appeareth most manifestly that you obtain your* 
riches of God, not only through your own prayer, but : 
through other men's too: other men help you to get\ 
them at God's hand."^^ The Levellers reinforced, or* 
rather replaced Latimer's argument, by pointing out 

36 Latimer, Sermom, pp. 398, 399, Parker Society. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 173 

the debt of the rich, to other forms of hnman labour 
than prayer. ^^If a man have no help from his neigh- 
bors, he shall never get an estate of hundreds and 
thousands a year. If other men help him to work, then 
are those riches his neighbors ' as well as his : for they 
be the fruits of other men's labors as well as his own. 
But all rich men live at ease, feeding and clothing 
themselves by the labors of other men, not by their 
own, which is their shame and not their nobility: for 
it is a more blessed thing to give than to receive. But 
rich men receive all they have from the laborer's 
hand, and w^hat they give, they give away other men's 
labors, not their own. Therefore they are not right- 
eous actors in the Earth. "^^ Latimer uses the in- 
debtedness of the rich to enforce the obligation of 
charity, the Levellers to deny the moral worth of char- 
ity. In either case, we have here a line of thought 
which is little considered in the main stream of Eef or- 
mation teaching. 

Secondly, the Puritan did not press any strong moral 
criticism of ownership. He did not regard misuse as 
impairing a man's right to property. The teaching of 
Wyclif found no immediate echo in the Eeformation. 
Wyclif claimed that ownership depended on a man's 
standing in grace. The sinful man would not truly 
own anything. As soon as a man fell into sin, his 
ownership became usurpation.^^ This was no abstract 
principle for Wyclif. He was prepared to enforce it 
legally. He would have justified the temporal power 
in taking away tithe from a church which misused it. 
His whole general argument leads up to this practical 

37 Berens, The Digger Movement, p. 173. 

3s A similar conception appears in the Canon Law. See Carlyle, 
Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, ii. p. 141. Wyclif s application 
of the principle to the Church wag. the revolutionary element in his 
teaching. 



174 PEOPEETY 

1 
conclusion. However, it was in relation to the Church \ 

that he was prepared to apply his principle rigorously, ■ 
as the Church, he held, was originally meant to be poor. 
Some of his followers went further and criticized lords 
temporal as well as lords ecclesiastical. As the main- > 
spring of a legal system Wyclif 's doctrine of property \ 
may seem fantastic ; yet undeniably it is a healthy 
stimulant to the conscience. It would not be a mistake 
to urge it on the attention of the individual, after the 
manner of John Woolman in his Word of Remem- 
brance to the Rich. In essentials, and yet I suppose in 
complete independence, this most loving of revolution- 
aries this late eighteenth-century Quaker, reproduces 
Wyclif ^s position, as is clear from such passages as 
these : * * Though the poor occupy our estate by a bar- 
gain, to which they in their poor circumstances agree, 
and we may even ask less than a punctual fulfilling of 
their agreement, yet if our views are to lay up riches : 
or to live in conformity to customs which have not ; 
their foundation in the truth, and our demands are ' 
such as require from them greater toil or application 
to business than is consistent with pure love, we invade 
their rights as inhabitants of a world of which a good 
and gracious God is the proprietor, and under whom 
we are tenants. As He who first founded the earth 
was then the true proprietor of it, so He still remains ; 
and though He hath given it to the children of men, 
so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance 
from it while they continued here, yet He hath never 
alienated it, but His right is as good as at first: nor 
can any apply the increase of their possessions con- 
trary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way 
which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing 
others, without being justly chargeable with usurpa- 
tion." Wyclif and Woolman are at one in holding 



AND THE KEFORMATION 175 

that only a good use of property confers a moral right 
to itj and that this moral right is deeper than any legal 
rightj is indeed the standard by which any legal right 
may be questioned or revised. The Puritan in effect 
did not go behind the legal right. He did not press the 
moral criticism of private ownership which reveals the 
otience against love so often and so deeply involved in 
it. Consequently the Puritan did not see, and those 
who follow the Puritan tradition closely do not often 
see what John Woolman saw; that *Ho labour for a 
perfect redemption from this spirit of oppression is 
the great business of the whole family of Christ Jesus 
in this world.'' 

This essay must not close without some reference, 
however brief, to the influence of the Evangelical Ee- 
vival. So far as the Evangelical attitude towards 
wealth is concerned, the term ^'revival" is strictly 
apposite. The whole movement tended to infuse a 
new spirit of absolute consecration into the old thought 
of stewardship. It viewed property not so much in 
the light of the Decalogue as in the far more searching 
light of the Gospel of the Cross, and of the sacred 
obligations it imposes on the Christian conscience. 
Thus Wilberforce is unsparing in his criticism of the 
average Christian who wishes to fence off the sphere 
of religion: **Eeligion can claim only a stated propor- 
tion of their thoughts, their time, their fortune and 
influence: and of these or perhaps of any of them if 
they make her anything of a liberal allowance, she may 
well be satisfied : the rest is now their own to do what 
they will with ; they have paid their tithes— say rather 
their composition—the demands of the church are sat- 
isfied : and they may surely be permitted to enjoy what 
she has left without molestation or interference."^® 

39 Wilberforce, Practical View of Christianity (1797), chap. iv. sec. 2. 



176 PEOPEKTY 

He proceeds to note how the idea of possession as a | 
trust from God fades from men's minds. This con- [ 
ception he proposes to revive. 

This fuller consecration of wealth was demanded 
by the many causes which called for philanthropic! 
effort. The Evangelicals whom Wilberforce and' 
Shaftesbury led were alive to the social evils of their j 
time, and eager to stem them chiefly by voluntary or> i 
ganization. In the numerous philanthropic societies i 
of the nineteenth century, a vast outlet was discovered 
for the expenditure of wealth and energy. ** Bibles, 
schools, missionaries, the circulation of evangelical 
books, and the training of evangelical clergy, the pos- 
session of well-attended pulpits, war through the press, 
and war in parliament against every form of injustice 
which either law or custom sanctioned,— -such were the j 
forces by which they hoped to extend the kingdom of 
light. ' ' *° The many-sided character of the philan- 1 
thropic appeal made Lord Shaftesbury conscious of ; 
the apathy of England, and of the condemnation for | 
sins of omission to which harmless people of all classes 
were liable. This ** innocent'' world could not face the 
question, **Have you laboured for the physical and 
spiritual welfare of your fellow-sinners ? " *^ i 

The great Evangelicals were not averse from State 
action, nor did they fall into the mistake of sharply 
separating the physical from the spiritual needs of 
men — a delusive antithesis which often haunts the : 
speech and snares the thought of Evangelicals, though , 
it is perhaps as often ignored by them in practice ! *^ 
But undoubtedly voluntary organizations, especially 1 
for the purpose of religious education, formed the out- 

40 Sir Jamea Stephen, Essay on The Olapham Sect. ' 

41 See Shaftesbury's Life by Hodder, pop. ed., p. 626. 

42 See especially a striking quotation in Shaftesbury's Ldfe, pp. 554-5. 



AND THE EEFOEMATION 177 

standing feature of the Evangelical movement. One 
characteristic of this religions and philanthropic ac- 
tivity has an important bearing on onr subject. It has 
been noted by Dr. T. C. Hall *^ that there was a demo- 
cratic, a levelling tendency in Evangelicalism. **To 
be even tainted with Evangelicalism was in the early 
years certainly, to be socially suspicions. It meant 
knowing * queer people' and going *out of one's sphere 
in life,' as the romance literature of the period abun- 
dantly shows us. ' ' Evangelical philanthropy over- 
leapt class-barriers, and* paved the way for a more 
searching criticism of class- standards of living. 

It i^ill thus be apparent that Evangelicalism not 
only revived the Puritan tradition of stewardship, and 
insisted on the responsibility of wealth in view of the 
nimiberless calls for philanthropic effort, but also 
stimulated that practical sense of brotherhood between 
men of different classes by which all use of wealth 
should be judged and guided. 

*3 In his essay on the Evangelical E^vival in Christ and Civilisation, 
p. 385. 



vn 

PEOPERTY AND PERSONALITY 

BY 

The Eev. HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND, D.D. 

BEGIUS PBOFESSOE OF DIVINITY, OXFORD, AND CANON OF CHEIST CHURCH 



179 



SUMMARY 

The prolonged vitality of the elemental definitions of property taken 
over from Stoical philosophers by Roman lawyers; passed on through 
scholastic tradition; to reappear in schemes of social contract by Hobbea 
and Rousseau, So long as this tradition held its ground, all existing 
legal enactments were limited by ideal of Natural Order. Private right 
of property could never make itself absolute,^ Existing law tested by 
its power to secure right; the claim of the poor made in the interests 
of justice, and not of charity. The tradition was summed up in the 
phrase "Property a trust." Over against this, at the Reformation, the 
rise in value of individual conscience and freedom. Private judgment 
sacred in religion. Individual initiative invoked by new world of 
thought, imagination, and adventure. So, in the order of Nature, the 
individual was regarded as absolutely free and unchecked; only to be 
limited by contract. Thus, through Locke and Rousseau, the tradition 
of the Order of Nature reached the French Revolution in an exaggerated 
individualistic form. 

Then again, the change and development of industry laid all the 
emphasis on the individual. Man free to put out his full force on his 
own account, released from external shackles. The result of this indi- 
vidualism was a tendency to push aside the tradition that private prop- 
erty was conditional and secondary, and to base it on absolute and 
primal right of individual to claim the fruit of his labours. The claim 
of others upon him is more and more rested on charity alone. So the 
fatal transition came about, which assumed the right of private property 
to be final and absolute. This reinforced by Hegel through teaching that 
personality requires private property for its full development; and again 
by British practical assumption that property is essential to full citi- 
zenship. The true citizen is a man with a stake in the country. Yet the 
resultant society, which grounds itself on the fundamental character of 
private property, and finds in ownership the spring of social virtues, 
has as a matter of fact so developed as to exclude the great mass of 
people from the possibilities of private ownership. Ownership of tools 
or trade by workers has been practically obliterated; and "the people" 
live on wages. That is, it has no permanent property of its own. In 
consequence, the workers are without self-direction, without assured 

180 



PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 181 

stability, and without independence, all of which are essential conditions 
for the development of individual character. Therefore individuals 
wither under a system governed by individualism. 

Our problem is to correct this unhappy issue. It has been brought 
about largely by false logic of personality. Personality has been assumed 
to be isolated and self-contained. In reality, personality is never soli- 

1 tary ; incapable of isolation ; exists only in fellowship, through inter- 

I communion of person w^th person. So if personality only can exist in 
a community, fellowship belongs to the inner essence of personality ; and 
every rise in significance of personality intensifies the significance of 

j society. The personality that acquires social rights is a personality 
which is collective and representative. So in holding private property, 
it acts as organ of Community. Thus, once again, private property is 

I ghown to be conditional and not absolute, for it means property privately 
held and administered in the name and interest of the community. 
Again, if personality is essentially collective, then it can develop through 
exercise of collective ownership. The community at large may become 
an owner ; and each Individual in the community will, as member of the 
community, exercise the rights and acquire the virtues of an owner. 
So property can be regarded as a trust administered by the whole com- 
munity, or, if by the individual, then not by him in his own right, but 
in' his organic, representative character, as identical, in interest and in 
will, with the society of which he is a member, and by virtue of which 
he exists as an individual. This ideal identification of individual and 
society only possible if God be the one supreme authority over both. 
Himself the only absolute justification of all rights of ownership. 



VII 

PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 

Looking back, after this prolonged Historical Eeview,, 
it is impossible not to be struck by the insistent vitality^ 
of the elemental conceptions as to the nature and! 
ground of property, which the Eoman lawyers took: 
over from the Stoic philosophy. From the day ini 
which the familiar expression given to them by the 
writings of Cicero had made them the possession of i 
every cultivated man, they have never ceased to work; 
within the mind with which we determine man's natu- 
ral right to possess what he can claim to be his own, 
and the degree and limits to which Society should en- 
force this claim. The particular philosophical theory 
by which the language was to be interpreted might 
drop out of the world's memory; but the language 
remained imbedded in law and custom, in formula andi 
proverb; and, still, there was left on the corporate) 
imagination the vague impression of a law of Nature' 
which could be found within and behind all particular 
laws, and of a natural right which was the inalienable ' 
possession of every individual man. These ruling 
ideals governed the existence and justification of Prop- 
erty. They passed into the very structure of human i 
thought through the Casuists and the Scholastics whoi 
did the work of thinking for the mediaeval world. 
They took a new lease of life in the schemes of Social ' 
Contract which held the intellectual field from Hobbes ' 
to Eousseau. They were often driven back out of the ' 

182 



PEOPERTY AND PERSONALITY 183 

ireiia of practical business by the industrial develop- 
nents of the last three centuries, which took their own 
stormy way regardless of speculative theories about 
ights and duties; and had to confine themselves to 
he domain of academic and forensic disputation. But 
hey were never dislodged. They could still make 
hemseives felt at critical moments of legislative deci- 
sion, and could still quicken into effective reality high- 
ounding parliamentary perorations. 
Thus, however vague might be the meaning attached 
|o the historic phrases, they always served to sustain 
In life a sense that any existent legal enactment on 
property had to justify itself at a higher bar. It was 
never, in itself, ultimate. Behind it and above it stood 
a supreme law grounded in some ideal natural order 
^of things. Sin and evil might prohibit the perfect 
^display of this high law. There might be necessities 
which justified recourse to lower methods and expe- 
diencies. But, nevertheless, some echo of this loftier 
code %vas the secret of all the authority claimed by the 
actual legalities enforced by Society upon its members. 
Something of the primal condition survived, which no 
after-work could wholly blot out. 

There was, therefore, an ideal standard to be recog- 
nized by which all existing legislation must be judged. 
The force which a Society could rightly use to repress 
wrong-doing and to assert private rights was not un- 
limited. Man's outlook travelled beyond it, and his 
conscience took in ideal conditions which had a natural 
and inalienable authority. In face of all the violence 
of War and Conquest, and in defiance of all the fetters 
that servile lawyers might be induced to forge, it was 
a splendid achievement to have transmitted this invisi- 
ble claim of all humanity to a right and a liberty of 
which no man-made law could ever dispossess it. 



,/ 



i]. 



184 PEOPERTY 

This tradition overhung the whole structural fabric f 
of Society, and it applied, with special emphasis, to 
the subject which this book has in hand. Private prop- 
erty, according to this view of life, obviously belonged 
to the secondary, and not to the primal, condition of 
human affairs. In the state of our Innocence it would 
not be needed or authorized. All would have been inj 
common. This is the constant refrain of the Fathers. ^ 
It is true that, by the Christian Doctrine of the Fall, 
they managed to get a more impassable barrier be-j 
tween then and now than the earlier philosophy had 
defined. For them, the condition of Innocence was 
gone beyond recall ; and the necessity for restraint, i 
limitation, repression, coercion was far more precisely 
determined through their recognition of universal sin. 
In this way Christianity supplied a stronger ground ' 
for the existence of the State, and for the legislation 
of private property, than had been possible before. 
Still it remained that private property, however inevi- 
table and justifiable under the condition of an evil I 
world, was nevertheless only a social expedient, not 
an absolute right; and it was bound, therefore, to be 
subject to the possibilities of a higher expediency. It 
was justified, but only as the most available method 
of attaining the common good in view of present perils ; 
and it has always to show that this, its proper end, is "jj 
being attained. 

This requirement led to two positions which could 
be supported by quotations from Fathers and Casuists. 

(1) Since, as Cicero had long ago proved, Law ex- 
ists to secure the Right, if it fail in this, its original 
purpose, it has lost its claim to be obeyed. Bad rulers 
and bad laws destroy their own authority. Wyclif had 
something behind him when he re-asserted this verdict. 
He could quote Augustine. 



PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 185 

(2) But there was another position more widely 

eld, and more effectual; and this was that the poor, 

I their need, were appealing not to charity but to 

istice. The owners of property were, after all, hold- 

ig what was due to all; and in giving to those in 

jecessity they were but giving them what was their 

Iwn. Father after Father had laid this down, often 

lith emphasis and passion. And the greatest of all 

pe Schoolmen had endorsed it by his declaration that 

ll which was over and above our practical wants was 

p. debt to those who needed its help. 

I The result of such a tradition might be summed up 

II the historic phrase that all property was held in 
irust. Those who used it had to answer to God, as 
lood stewards, for its use. There was no moral or 
pgai possibility of standing on the bare claim of pos- 
lession. The possession of private property was con- 
itional, not absolute. And its public utility must be 
iistiiied, and answered for, at the bar of divine judg- 
|ient* This was the underlying assumption which has 
lassed into our normal historical heritage, and can 
lever again be wholly lost, 

I But, in the meantime, during the centuries which 
Ipened with the Eenaissance, a vigorous intellectual 
ieveloprnent had been taking place, which partly 
Ibscured, and partly countered, this ancient tradition. 
lian had set himself to disclose and to discover the full 
iigniiicance of personality. He was himself, in his 
Individual character, the seat and focus of all that 
lould interest or affect him. He was no mere speci- 
pen of a type, no mere item in a class, no mere unit 
p a society. Type, class, society, must interpret and 
iUstify themselves to him directly, in his personal and 
i)rivate conscience. He is at the centre of his own 
life, not on the circumference of some one else's. He 



186 PEOPERTY 



I 



knows himself, he answers for himself, he controls and 
directs himself — face to face with the God who is hi£ 
God. So the outbreak of the Reformation had de-i 
clared. The individual conscience, the private jiidg-: 
ment, had shaken themselves free from externai; 
shackles. Luther had pitted his solitary soul against 
the weight of system and tradition. The emphasis wag 
bound to be given to the sanctity of individual rightr 
and to the inviolability of individual freedom. The 
claim triumphantly asserted in the domain of the spirii 
could not but react over the whole area of active life* 
wherever personality was at work. And it was at worM 
everywhere. The earth had been laid bare to it; new 
horizons widened the range of its possibilities; new 
worlds awaited its conquest; its windows opened ob 
to the foam of untravelled seas beyond which la^ij 
*^faery lands forlorn." Life was for the adventurou^ 
for the independent, for those who could launch oui 
alone and tempt the perilous flood. Everything con-' 
spired to invoke into play the vigour and daring o, 
individual initiative. A man was asked to fling behinc 
him the worn-out familiar customs of social activity 
on which lay already the dust of death, and to let him: 
self go, out of sheer trust in his own soul, to discovei 
what novel experiences might unfold their secret.^ 
under the conquering force of his own personal attack 
Individuality came inevitably to the front. The dramij 
atists laid hold of the theme by artistic instinct. They 
saw the poetic value of dynamic' or even demonic per-: 
sonalities, impelled into solitary significance by thti 
tragic irony of adverse circumstances. They loved t(( 
think of that infinite variability which gives to humari 
character its bewildering fascination. 

The day of individuality had come as long ago in 
the Hellas of Socrates and the Sophists. And sociaa 



PROPERTY AND PERSONALITY 187 

eories were inevitably affected by its invading pres- 

nce. To men of peaceful and timid rationality like 

Phomas Hobbes, it wore the form of menace. He 

ihuddered at the thought of a condition of primitive 

ature in which he, and those of his kidney, wonld lie 

t the mercy of these exuberant, boisterous, aggressive 

ersonalities, all bent on self-assertion. Such a life 

Iras terrible to contemplate — it would be *^ short, bru- 

Ijish and nasty." Mankind must, perforce, buttress 

itself against this clash and crash of militant individ- 

|alities by concerted action, by drawing together to 

Ireate a community, which could come to its own rescue 

|nder the obligations of a social contract. So the mass 

ft weaker men might be strong enough to hold their 

hwi against the overwhelming appetites of masterful 

[Individuals. Under such a contract, they might secure 

jheir right over private possessions. 

I Or again, as we have seen in the earlier essays, 

Locke and the School of English Rationalists gave an 

Intensely individual turn to the natural rights with 

i^^hich man was endowed, and laid it down that a man 

jnight claim a right of possession over any material 

.nto which he had put his own individual labour. It 

was through this English philosopher that the ancient 

loctrine of a state of Nature as a natural law reached 

Rousseau; and it was in this individualistic form that 

.t created the jflaming watchword of the French Revo- 

ntion. 

It was true that Rousseau's own theory of social 
contract led him to an admirable organization of a 
Social Self, a **Moi Commun" into which the mere 
self-centred, self-seeking Ego of Nature passed by a 
)aptism of the Spirit. The old self was gone, with its 
larrow individuality; and a new individuality had 
5ome into play, corporate and representative by its 



188 PEOPEETY 

inner character, embodying and focussing in itself the 
mind and will of the commnnityj finding its own exist- 
ence in identification with the universal desire. This 
is the true individual who can take up the duties of 
citizenship. He is moralized by his universalism. He 
lives in others, and they live in him. The right over 
private property which he possesses comes to him 
through this identification. It is by the will of the 
community that he can exercise freely a will of his own. 

Here is a noble social philosophy. Only it depends 
for its authority on an historical contract by which 
men have bound themselves to die to their natural soli- ^ 
tude of being. Yet they could never have come to-i 
gether to enter into such a contract unless they had 
already possessed the corporate and social character 
which the contract was invented to account for. That ; 
is the difficulty of all theories of that kind. The social j 
contract presupposes the qualities which it is supposed 
to originate. 

But, anyhow, this was not the side of Eousseau gos« \ 
pel on which the Eevolution seized. It flared out with 
the bare news that Nature had made man free, and, 
yet, that he had made himself everywhere a slave. He 
could regain his true self only by throwing himself 
back upon his original and primal claim to Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity. Here, again, the liberty phrases 
wore the air which had been characteristic of the Eef- 
ormation. There might be qualifications to be made; 
but, still, the heart of the matter lay in the free right 
of the individual man to break with all authority im- 
posed from without, and to go his own way, and boj 
his own master. All men equally had this right to be 
themselves; and in exercising this equality of free 
development they will find their brotherhood with one 
another. Their natural right was the right to live, to 



* PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 189 

rovk out tlieir own destiny, to find food enough and 
oom enough, in reward for their own labours, on the 
Ijlroad bosom of a mother-earth which was full and fer- 
lliie in response to the demands of her children. Society 
/liight have to collect its coercive or militant forces in 
Irder to assert the liberty of man against foreign foe 
\|r internal oppressor; and the Eevolution was pre- 
f)ared to commit even extreme power to the State 
?■ )rganization in emergencies. But still the dream, the 
ipsion of the Age of reason and freedom and benevo- 
lence, was one out of which State necessities had 
mropped, and every one was his own law and his own 
piaster, safe in his possessions, assured of his own 
l^oods, glad and at peace under his own vine and fig 
free, fraternally interested in knowing and seeing that 
|kli his brothers had their own individual joy. 
I Yet, over all this social and theoretic emphasis laid 
|)n the reality of the individual at the Eef ormation and 
|)nwards, there still hovered the corrective and haunt- 
fing memory of that authoritative tradition which went 
behind all institutional legalization of private prop- 
erty, and, from the standpoint of primitive humanity, 
refused to attribute to it any absolute value.^ It was 
otherwise in the other departments of human affairs, 
hich had already in the eighteenth century begun to 
ssume the form which was to develop so amazing an 
expansion. Industry had undergone its own revolu- 
^tion ; and, under its moral conditions, it gave free rein 
jto this liberty which, from so many sides and for varied 
reasons, individuality had learned to claim. Here, in 

1 It could still shape our prayers. Cf. Prayer in Queen Elizabeth's 
Primer: "Thou, O Lord, providest enough for all men with Thy most 
liberal and bountiful hand. But wherever Thy gifts are, in respect of 
Thy goodness and free favour, made free unto all men, we (through our 
haughtiness and niggardliness and distrust) do make them private and 
peculiar. Correct Thou the things which our iniquity hath put out of 
order: let Thy goodness supply that which our niggardliness hath 
plucked away." 



190 PEOPEETY I 

i 

commerce, there was opportunity indeed for tlirowin^^ 
off external and prescriptive obstacles, and for staking; 
all your confidence on individual initiative. Hera" 
indeed, each man counts simply for what he is, anc 
for what he can make of himself. Here he has a righi^ 
to put out his energy in any direction that he can makci 
good, and to hold in his personal possession anything 
that he can win in the open market. Trade is open 
and free, and all may take their chance in it. What 
he can get, he has. He holds it by virtue of his owj][ 
strength and courage and knowledge. In doing thei 
best for himself, he is accumulating the general wealtlij 
Let him go ahead, he needs no other authority than hisi 
own superior skill to justify his grip on his oa^ti win- 
nings. 

This was the judgment of the new commercial con- 
science. And as a logical result, it tended to treat the 
claim to hold private property as final. It gave no 
reason for going behind it. There were certain State 
necessities which must be provided for; and individ- 
uals, in return for police protection and public security 
and a secured opportunity for doing business, might 
rightly be taxed to supply their social needs. But it 
was the concern of the State to reduce these to the 
minimum by policies of peace, retrenchment, and re- 
form; and so to leave the largest possible liberty to 
the private owner to do what he willed with his own. 
Or, again, it was seemly for those who were well fa- 
voured in their ventures to exhibit a high standard 
of public beneficence and to aid those less fortunate 
than themselves. It was right to rate very high the 
virtues of charity. But the very earnestness of the 
personal appeals made to the conscience of the rich 
on behalf of the poor was itself a mtness to the abso- 
luteness of their command over their property. It 



PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 191 

iij, ,epende(i wholly on their goodwill whether they wonld 
bspond, and the appeal to their generosity could never 
ise above the level of an emotional motive. 

This appeal to charity, whenever it is greatly in 
Vidence, is a snre signal that things have got wrong, 
t always means that the individual right is treated as 
hsolute in itself, and has escaped out of its proper 
ubordination to the demands of justice. The stress 
n the duty of beneficence and almsgiving, which Mr. 
N'ood notes as so emphatic in Puritan addresses and 
,|nanualSj is rather an ominous sign. The earlier the- 
)logy laid the like stress to a somewhat dangerous 
Ixtent; but, then, it grounded its pleas for charity 
jilways on the supreme justice which claimed the gift 
IS a debt. But the idea of the debt faded wholly away 
ut of the industrial world of the nineteenth century, 
t had forgotten that there was any question as to the 
ight of private property to exist, or as to the condi- 
itions of its origin. It had ceased to doubt its ultimate 
lvalue. It had its origin, plainly enough, in the exer- 
tions and the capacity of the individual man who earned 
it or made it. His right to it was to be found in his 
right to be himself. What more could you wanf? 

It is this intellectual passage from the conception 
bf private property as secondary and contingent to the 
conception of it as ultimate and absolute, which has 
caused all the trouble. And this passage was made, 
almost insensibly, through the intense realization of 
the value to be set on the liberty of the individual to 
live his own life. 

Prom another side, again, the position reached under 

the influence of practical commercialism, with its em- 

iphasis on the freedom of the individual to put out his 

own powers to full exercise, was reinforced by the 

higher Idealism of Germany. Hegel saw in private 



192 PEOPERTY 

property the full opportunity for the development of: 
the true ideal individual to which all his logic had led! 
him. Through ownership, personality realized its; 
power of self -direction and self-control. Personality 
is trained, through the discipline of property, to make^ 
its own self -disclosure as a ruling and active agent im 
the world of affairs. It comes to itself, thus realizing; 
its power to manipulate and govern and use and direct ; 
a permanent stock of effective force. Its own actuality ' 
is revealed to it through this identification of itself 
with the real. It shows itself to be essentially an end,^, 
and not a means. It acquires a sense of self-centred, 
sufficiency. It establishes its right to independence. , 
It wins a footing of its own, a pivot for its action, by 
virtue of which it can assert itself as a unit of force i 
in the correlated activities and services and functions i 
of the organic community. It is moralized and spir- 
itualized by being secured in this recognized position! 
of self-dependent and authentic reality. 

So the big German philosophy works out that intel- 
lectual justification of private property which the prac- 
tical English man of business expresses by the phrase, 
'*A man of property is one who has a stake in the 
country. ' ' He is a qualified citizen whose interests are , 
bound up with the interests of the whole community. 
He has committed himself, he has taken his place, he 
has become a focus and seat and centre of civic obli- 
gation. He has a personality that counts in the sum 
of the whole. He has rights as weU as obligations. He 
is a true ethical unit. For he owns property. 

So we all say, and everybody cheers. Thus ** per- 
sonalty" nearly spells personality. Only the strange 
thing is that the very Society which, in theory, has so 
emphatically grounded itself on the fundamental basis 
of private property, and has found in the sense of 



PEOPERTY AND PERSONALITY 193 

ownership the spring and source of these moral excel- 
lencies on which it builds its own security, nevertheless 
allows itself to develop in a direction which is con- 
stantly reducing the number of people who can have 
a chance of experiencing what ownership means. Our 
industrial organization has found it essential to its 
success to wipe out the multitude of small owners, 
who once found their place in our trade. It has 
stripped the agricultural labourer of all that gave him 
a hold on the land. The vast mass of workers in our 
towns have long ago ceased to have any right of pos- 
session over the tools or materials of their occupation. 
They have dropped to the position of pure w^age-earn- 
ers, and that means that they have no secure footing 
of their own, no self-dependent area on which to fall 
back, no reserved resources which are under their own 
control and direction. Their existence is never in their 
own hands; nor are they responsible for their own 
maintenance. The stability, the power to look before 
and after, the assured hold on reality, the embodiment 
of their own w4Us in a material fact, which we philo- 
sophically recognize to be the moral and spiritual value 
of private o'wnership,™all this is denied them. They 
enjoy no sense of backgroimd such as would endow 
their individual lives with a certain dignity. They 
exist on the surface; they cannot strike roots, and 
establish permanency. The forces on which their very 
being depends are wholly out of their ken or power. 
They are regulated by others, who are out of sight. 
They themselves live by the day or the week, and are 
liable to every sort of accidental or unanticipated dis- 
placement. It is just the moral discipline of respon- 
sible ownership which they are bound to lack. This 
is the class which our system of industry sets itself 
to create and use, both in town and country. Its work 



194 PEOPEETY 

is rested entirely on the wage, and the wage means 
the absence of ownership. 

And not only so, bnt the permanent claim made for 
the right and valne of private property is so nsed as 
to make the many the practical property of the few. 
Property is not valued for its use, but for its power, 
as Professor Hobhouse has shown. The o^\Tier does 
not claim what is his own for the sake of using it. 
For, indeed, he owns far more than he can ever dream 
of using. The unhappy multi-millionaire cannot con- 
sume, through his own efforts, more than £10,000 a 
year, as one of them dolefully confessed. If his income 
is over a million, then all this surplusage goes to en- 
large his domination. What he does is to exercise 
power over others. He can prescribe for them what 
their life shall be ; what opportunity they will have for 
gaining a livelihood; where they shall live, and under 
what conditions. He has thousands upon thousands 
dependent on him for their existence. He utilizes 
their labour, and turns it to efficient exercise and profit. 
His private property gives him the power by which 
others are deprived of their possession of themselves. 
Thus the great capitalist, by the exercise of his own 
right of ownership, limits and cancels the self-owner- 
ship which others might enjoy. Himself the great 
illustration of the capacities of private property, he 
is also, by that very fact, the great example of its 
destruction. By enlarging his own immense stake in 
the country, he creates a multitude of individual work- 
ers who have no permanent stake to speak of. The 
property which gives him such efficient power, does 
so by depriving others of the very power which he 
possesses — the power to be their own master and to 
control their own destiny. Thus it has come about that 
the Society which boasts of its reliance on the freedom 



PROPERTY AND PERSONALITY 195 

of individual self -development nevertheless allows only 
a limited proportion of its individual members to pos- 
sess the freedom. It appeals to the moralizing in- 
fluence of ownership; and then denies the possibilities 
of any real ownership to the main mass of its members. 

Individualism, then, finds its worst opportunity in 
an individualistic society. The law of competition, 
working under our present capitalism, while offering 
scope and fulfilment to the very few, wrecks and under- 
mines the individuality of the many. And this it does 
just because it gives to so very few the chance of em- 
bodying the permanent worth of the personality in 
any enduring right of possession. It leaves the vast 
multitude of workers to become mere items on the 
surface, without any secured future, without any sure 
grip on facts, without any stored reserve, without any 
established status. Personal value finds no public 
witness. Character has no firm pivot round which it 
can build up its fabric. The inner life misses its outer 
support. It obtains no substantial recognition; it can- 
not give public or visible evidence why it should be 
acknowledged and honoured. It has no pledge to prof- 
fer of its own permanence. It has no fixed centre round 
which associations and relations and obligations may 
coalesce. It lacks the basis out of which it can educate 
itself into structural coherence, or through which it 
can respond and react in counter-play to all the forces 
that tell upon it from without. 

All this the human personality requires, if it is to 
discover its strength and to develop its capacities. All 
this it could gain out of the exercise of ownership, in 
a community of owners. All this it is bound to miss 
in a community in which real ownership is the excep- 
tion, and only the few can attain to the full liberty and 
independence of self-possession. 



196 PEOPEETY 

By forcing Individualism, then, we have^ somehow, 
, evicted individualities. By over-assertion of the abso- 
lute right of the individual man to have what is his 
own, we have landed ourselves in a situation in which 
the majority of men are not their own masters, and 
have a minimum of what they can call their own. Ob- 
viously, our logic has gone wrong somehow. 

Shall we try to see how the trouble began? And, 
reviewing the last three centuries of our social evolu- 
tion, (Shall we not be justified in suspecting that it is 
our philosophy of personality which has been at fault? 

We laid hold, at the Eef ormation and the Eevolution, 
on the supreme value of personality; and we found 
the secret of this value to lie in the sanctity and free- 
dom of the individual man. We isolated this core of 
individuality; and we attributed to it, in its isolation, 
all its high privileges and prerogatives, all its sacred 
rights and inveterate claims. The individual man jus- 
tified himself. He constituted his own natural right 
to live, to grow, to put out his powers. He was the 
spring of his own liberty, and the owner of his own 
activity. He, in his solitary dignity of being, answered 
for himself to God alone. He owned no other lordship. 
To Him alone was he bound to give account of his 
stewardship over His goods. 

But can an individuality ever be isolated? Was this 
not a false start? What is individuality? And where 
is it to be found? Can it appear, can it exist, except 
in a community of which it is the representative organ? 
The individual man draws all his significance out of 
the fact that he is the expression of some social body 
to which he belongs. He is a member of his race, of 
his nation ; on that depends in fact his individual worth. 
This is why he counts. He is a sample of what his 
nationality means. Every claim that he makes for 



PEOPEETY AND PEESONALITY 197 

himself can be made in pressing the same terms for 
others. He cannot give himself any value that he 
denies to others. As he rises into free self-assertion, 
so these others rise all round him with identical rights. 
He and they are created by the same act and under 
the same law. He can never be intelligible except in 
terms which include and involve others. Individuality, 
then, is really representative, is corporate, is social, 
by the very principle of its like. It can only be under- 
stood as the unit of a society. 

And this only leads us down deeper into the root- 
conception of personality wliich finds expression in 
individuality. Personality lies in the relation of per- 
son to person. A personality is what it is only by 
virtue of its power to transcend itself and to enter into 
the life of another. It lives by interpenetration, by 
intercourse, by communion. Its power of life is love. 
There is no such thing as a solitary, isolated person. 
A self-contained personality is a contradiction in 
terms. What we mean by personality is a capacity 
for intercourse, a capacit^^ for retaining self-identity 
by and through identification with others — a capacity 
for friendship, for communion, for fellowship. Hence 
the true logic of personality compels us to discover 
the man's personal worth in the inherent necessity of 
a society in which it is realized. Society is, simply, 
the expression of the social inter-commmiion of spirit 
yvitlx spirit which constitutes what we mean by per- 
sonality. Fellowship and Individuality are correlative 
terms. 

It is therefore impossible to emphasize the reality 
of personal existence and personal claims, or personal 
liberty, without in the very same breath asserting the 
emphatic reality of social obligation, the paramount 
authority of social order, the sanctity of social law. 



y' 



198 PEOPEETY 

Every rise in the value of the State involves a corre- 
vi spending rise in the value of the individual that incor- 
porates it. Every increase in the personal freedom 
witnesses to the supreme significance of the common 
life of which that liberty is the witness and the expres- 
sion. 

Personality, then, is always collective in basis. In 
every individual act and word it is putting out power 
which comes to it through its place in the community. 
The *'moi" which asserts its free individuality is still 
the **moi commun" of Eousseau. It may legitimately 
claim the right to personal possession : but the claim so 
made will belong to it by virtue of its corporate and 
representative qualification; so that the individual 
right to own private property is an expression of the 
community's right to have and to hold its own, put 
out through the person of one of its members. It can 
never be an absolute right inherent in the man himself ; 
for he, as a personality, is inseparable from the fellow- 
ship which constitutes his personal existence. He 
holds what he can call his own by virtue of his status 
inside the fellowship; and, if so, the justification of 
his private ownership must always be found in the 
welfare and the will of the community. He must be 
expressing the will of the State in having personal 
authority to administer this or that possession. He 
can never claim to be outside or beyond the range of 
this general will, for only through it can he be what 
he is. 

Once again, then, we have renewed the supremacy 
of justice over all conditions under which private prop- 
erty is held. It is as a member of the Body that he 
has right of possession; and, therefore, all his right 
of possession is governed by the good of the Body, 
which is his own good. Any demands on his private 



PEOPERTY AND PERSONALITY 199 

purse, which the general welfare renders expedient, 
are not invasions of his personal wealth, nor drafts 
upon his charity; they are the acts of that identical 
justice by which he is qualified to be an owner. His 
personality is not repressed or curtailed by being sub- 
ject to those social demands ; for the existence of those 
social demands is involved in his personality. It is 
not a conflict between his private interest and that of 
the State ; for he is himself a citizen in the State, and 
its interests are his. If he disputes any demand made 
upon him, it will be on the ground that the interest of 
tlie State will be injured by its insistence. The State 
itself is interested for its own sake in seeing to it that 
his interests are not injured. 

Nor is it only private property that is thus brought 
into ethical subordination to the needs of social justice, 
but also new possibilities of ownership are laid open 
through the recognition of the collective element in 
personality. For if personality be representative and 
collective, then it may find its field of exercise and 
realization through collective ownership. Men may 
win the moral qualities which the sense of property 
evokes, by owning things in common. 

We have, indeed, seen this happen to the wage- 
earners bv virtue of their Trade Unions. For while 
the wage system tends to reduce actual ownership to 
a minimum, and deprives the main mass of the in- 
dustrial population of that sense of permanent private 
property which, economically, it rates so highly, never- 
theless the workers have contrived, through massing 
their small subscriptions, to build up Unions with big 
funds in reserve; and, with the help of this accumu- 
lated support, they have recaptured much of the moral 
force which is embodied in ownership. They gain 
stability, for instance ; they can look before and after. 



200 PEOPEETY 

They can secure some control over their own life- 
conditions. They can get their own will expressed and 
realized. They can exercise self-responsibility. They 
have reserves on which to draw; and are not at the 
mercy of temporary emergencies, or casual accidents. 
They can feel ground under them. They stand on their 
own feet. They are conscious of some independence. 
They have a recognized place in the world of affairs, 
and can make good their claims on existence. They 
are themselves established and rooted amidst the the- 
ory of things, through their corporate organization, 
and their certified holding. All this is the condition 
that we associate with the status of ownership; and 
every individual member of a strong Union thus ac- 
quires something of the worth and the dignity with 
which a man of property is endowed. Collectively, he 
has the moral stability of ownership; and if he has 
become aware of the true character of his personality, 
then he will gladly find for it its adequate expression 
by means of this collective ownership. He will not 
want his consciousness of property to be more defi- 
nitely individualized. He wiU enjoy the sense of own- 
ership as much in its public as in its private form. 
For his inner personal life is expressed as fully in the 
one as in the other. Thus the privilege of ownership 
may be expanded over all those workers who are 
organized into permanent and effective Trade Unions. 
And the principle might be carried much further. 
Through all the volume of factory legislation the Na- 
tion is exerting her right of self-ownership. Through 
it she directs her own destiny ; she brings herself into 
possession of her own affairs ; she exercises her right 
of self -responsibility; she makes her will felt through 
material expression; she embodies in solid fact her 
sovereign self-control ; for, as she thus governs her life 



PEOPERTY AND PERSONALITY 201 

intention, she makes this earth her own. The entire 
lody, then, collectively asserts its power of ownership 
irongh the Legislature. The moral stability and in- 
ependence wliich property legitimately secures are 
onstituted national possessions; while every individ- 
al citizen, who is conscious of what his citizenship 
leans, gains, so far, the ethical value of a collective 
wner. He is moralized by such self-possession, medi- 
fted for him through his membership in the State. 

It is beyond the purpose of this essay to discuss 
|0W far this collective ownership will carry us. It is 
fnough to have shown that, in it, lies the most avail- 
able correction of that ironical paradox by which an 
kaggerated notion of the absolute value of private 
|roperty has led a Society based on individualism to 
onfine the range of this value within a limited circle. 
Ob^dously, if ownership has the virtues ascribed to 
then it ought to be extended to all. It ought to be 
included in the universal conditions of citizenship. 
This is only possible if collective ownership can come 
nto play over and beyond the area which private own- 
lirship can cover, and so can spread out, for the many, 
he opportunity which our present system confines 
|:o the few. And this will depend on how far collective 
ownership can work upon the individual conscience 
Ipd imagination with the same force as we now attrib- 
ute to private proprietorship. The confidence with 
pi^ich we meet this last inquiry wiU depend entirely 
\m our psychological estimate of personality. If any- 
thing of what we have said be true, then personality, 
IwMch is inherently representative, will find its real 
knd rich and effective realization under the terms of 
l^ollective life. Collective ownership will be an ade- 
buate and joyful expression of its inner character and 
jibeing. We shall be able to translate the old phrase. 



V 



202 PEOPEETY | 

which declared private property to be a trust for wMch 
we shall give account to God, in a new sense. We had 
haggled over the apparent individualism of such aj 
conception. It omitted all reference to a community. I 
It left the individual alone with God, to answer simply ^ 

I for himself. His fellows had no direct authority to 
review or decide what his exercise of his trust should 
be. But, now, we see that the trust that we speak of 
is a corporate trust. He holds it in and with his fel- 
lows. The personality which is answerable to God 
for its proper exercise of the trust, has its inherent 
existence in a fellowship, and, out of the fellowship, it 
^ has no authority to act. The trust is a common act. 

^ The fellowship is in trust for all that it holds ; and the 
individual, only as organ and instrument of the fellow- i 
ship. He can be called upon to fulfil the charges for | 
which the community makes itself responsible in the 
discharge of its trust. It is not a secret affair between 
him and his God, how he administers his goods. The 

yj community can thus require of him whatever it needs 
in order to justify its own administration of its re- 
sources before the bar of God. His right of possession, 
his use of his own, are always relative to the larger 
trust within which he acts. 

And, yet further, if he is to identify his personal 
claim with the claim of the fellowship he must have! 

^' the assurance that the fellowship is not arbitrary or 
absolute in the demands that it makes upon him. And 
this assurance he can only have if the exercise of its 
ownership by the fellowship, within which his o^vn 
right of ownership is exercised, be itself the expression 
of that absolute ownership which is the sole preroga- 
, tive of the God Who made the earth and all that is in 

^ it. Back to God all rights run. Back in Him, the 
ultimate Creator, producing and sustaining and justi- 



PROPEKTY AND PERSONALITY 203 

^ying every capacity and energy that His will has set 
in action, all ownership stands. All claims are made 
by Him, through Him, to Him. His righteousness is 
the bond of all hnman fellowship. And this is so, just 
because property in outward goods is but the outcome 
of personality ; and all human personality is the issue 
and image of the personality of God. In the Divine 
Fellowship in which God realizes Himself lies the 
source and justification of every fellowship into which 
rnan can enter. Man's authority to say of anythmg 
'^That is mine'' rests, finally, on his power to say ^*I 
am God's," 



vin 

SOME ASPECTS OP THE LAW OF 
PEOPEETY IN ENGLAND 

BY 

Professor W. M, GELBART 



SUMMARY 

The place of the lawyer in this volume. Property is, on one side a? 
least, a legal conception. Absence of any legal definition of propert^t 
which will hold good for all purposes. The aim of this essay is descrip] 
tion rather than definition. Law as an embodiment of ethics or publicij 
policy. The three aspects of our law of property which will be her(r| 
considered. 

I. Property and interference by the State. Blackstone and the l&w 
of nature: can an Act of Parliament be void? His theory of property 
as a natural right. His treatment of the question of expropriation. 

Expropriation by Act of Parliament in England : delegation to admin-i 
istrative authorities in recent times: recent tendency to reduce the scalel. 
of compensation. 

The power to expropriate is with us merely an instance of the sove- 
reignty of Parliament: in America property is protected by the constitu-i 
tion, and interferences with it must be justified by specific powers:: 
eminent domain, the taxing power, the police power. English freedomo 
from any legal restrictions on these powers. 

n. The content of the right of property, and its relation to otheri 
rights. "A man may do as he wills with his own": sic utere tuo ut 
aUen,urti non laedas. Little assistance to be got from such maxims. 
The solidity or elasticity of the right of property in relation to other 
interests. Duties of the owner towards neighbours. The legal protec- 
tion of the owner's rights by criminal and civil law. Limited duties of 
the o\vner towards the public. Limited character and protection of 
public rights such as rights of way. Improved security of the public 
enjoyment of common landsw 

III. Property cannot be forced into the dichotomy, public or private. 
Influence of Roman Law traditions in presenting the problem as one of 
the Individual v. the State. Recog-nition in Roman Law of family claims. 
Freedom of disposition in English law set off by the facilities for settle- 
ment, which has made land in effect the property of family groups. 

The English law of corporations: Corporations in the Church of 
England. Universities and Colleges. Corporations with government 
functions, corporations serving the purposes of private profit. The 
dedication of property to a purpose by means of a trust. Charitable 
trusts. The trust as a device which enables unincorporated associa- 
tions to own property. 

206 



VIII 

SOME ASPECTS OF THE LAW OF 
PEOPEETY IN ENGLAND 

Ckglish institutions are commonly supposed to be, or 

have been till recently, peculiarly individualist in 

pirit, and this spirit is commonly supposed to be pre- 

jminently exhibited in English law. It may be said 

Jihat if this is a fact, it is irrelevant to the subject with 

^liich under various aspects the present volume is 

boncerned, **The thesis,'^ it may be said, *'is not one 

)f law, but of social ethics; the rights of property 

tv^hich, it is contended, should give way to social well- 

3eing, are or claim to be moral rights, not legal rights. 

[f law permits them to be sacrificed, this will not make 

it just to sacrifice them: if law invests them with iii- 

v'iolability, this will not avail for their defence before a 

higher than the legal tribunal." 

It is just as well for a lawyer to bear in mind such 
considerations as these when he is invited to con- 
tribute to the present volume. Ne sutor supra crepi- 
dam; and he ought to be thankful for the Austinian 
drill which has taught him to distinguish the positive 
flaw with which jurisprudence is conversant from those 
[other kinds of law, whether properly or improperly so 
called, which may be the subject-matter of philosophi- 
cal or theological speculation. And yet it may be that 

207 



208 PKOPEETY 

some words on certain aspects of modern Englisli law 
will not be out of place among the historical, philo- 
sophical, and religions considerations which are the 
main theme of this collection. Whether property as 
an institution conld be conceived as existing at all 
apart from law is a question hardly worth considering 
at a time when the legal aspect bulks so largely as it 
does in modern civilization. Whatever else property 
is, it is a legal conception, and, in its broad outlines, 
one of the elementary legal facts of which every one, 
without legal training, is aware from his experience 
of the society in which he lives, just as every one is 
aware of elementary facts of physics or physiology 
without having studied these sciences or even knowing 
their names. 

It is not by way of abstract definition that the law- 
yer, at any rate the English lawyer, can hope to make 
the conception of property more serviceable for non- 
legal discussion. He would be hard put to it to find a 
definition which would hold water for all, even legal, 
purposes. At one time he will distinguish property 
and possession, at another he will speak of the pos- 
sessor as having a *^ special property" in the thing of 
which another is the ol^mer. He will deny that the 
subject can have a true property in English land, and 
the next moment he will find that a man's fee-simple 
or leasehold estate is described in a Statute imposing 
death duties as ** property of which the deceased was 
competent to dispose." He will contrast the coins in 
my pocket, which are my property, with the £100 which 
my debtor owes me but which is not my property, and 
yet this debt, if I should become bankrupt, will figure 
among the property divisible among my creditors. 
Karely if ever has the lawyer occasion to say anything 
of property which shall hold good of all property and 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 209 

for all purposes. If ever he has, he might do a good 
deal worse than read what Professor Hobhonae has to 
say of the notion of property. 

What I have to say is rather by way of description 
than of definition. Widely sundered as are law and 
ethics, law yet embodies much of the ethics or public 
policy of the time in which it has grown up. An ac- 
count of some of the features of our law as it is to-day, 
or has been in the recent past, may be of some service 
if it calls attention to conceptions of public and private 
right which have been for the time being fixed in its 
structure, or which have been rejected or gradually 
eliminated, or which are in process of securin^iT accep- 
tance. I shall not attempt to answer the question sug- 
gested at the outset, whether the spirit of our law can 
be called mainly individualist or mainly coUectivist. 
No society and no law can be wholly one or the other, 
nor have we any known standard of either by which 
the institutions of a country could be measured. But 
as I shall try to suggest in the last part of this paper, 
there are at any rate some features in our law which 
cannot well be classed under either head. The sub- 
jects with which I propose to deal are, first, expropria- 
tion and other direct interferences by the State with 
private property ; secondly, the content of the right of 
property and its relation to other rights and interests ; 
and thirdly, forms of property which are private in the 
sense of not being State property, and yet are not in- 
dividual property. 



If anywhere, we might expect to find in Blackstone 
a doctrine which would entrench the rights of property 
within the domain of natural law, safe from the en- 
croachments of political power. **The law of nature," 



210 PEOPEKTY 

he says/ ** being coeval with mankind and dictated by 
God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any 
other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, 
at all times ; no human laws are of any validity if con- 
trary to this ; and such of these as are valid derive all 
their force and all their authority, mediately or imme- 
diately from this original." From this we might 
expect that he would tell us something in detail of the 
invalidity of human laws which are at variance with 
the law of nature, but we find nothing of the sort. 
With regard to Acts of Parliament he gives a numbe^f 
of rules for their construction, and among others a 
rule that **if there arise out of them collaterally any 
absurd consequence manifestly contrary to common 
reason, they are with regard to these collateral con- 
sequences, void," but he expressly denies that Acts 
of Parliament contrary to reason are void. *'If the 
parliament will positively enact a thing to be done 
which is unreasonable, I know of no power in the ordi- 
nary forms of the constitution that is vested with 
authority to control it, and the examples usually al- 
leged in support of this sense of the rule do none of 
them prove that where the main object of a statute is 
unreasonable, judges are at liberty to reject it; for 
that were to set the judicial power above that of the 
legislature, which would be subversive of all govern- 
ment."^ It is not clear whether he would treat an Act 
which contradicted natural law as included in the case 
of an unreasonable Act, but it is at least noteworthy 
that he nowhere says that such an Act would be void ; 
the truth seems to be that he refuses to face the possi- 
bility of such a conflict. As to the right of property 
he is equally unwilling to bring the question to a defi- 
nite issue. He includes property among ** absolute 

1 Commentaries, i. 41. 2 Commentaries, i, 91. 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 211 

rights" of individuals, by which he means '* those . 
which are so in their primary and strictest sense ; such 
as would belong to their persons merely in a state of 
nature, and v/hich every man is entitled to enjoy j^ 
whether out of society or in it, " ^ yet with no great 
[assurance and with great limitations; *Hhe original of 
[private property is probably founded in nature, as will 
I be more fully explained in the second book of the en- 
suing commentaries; but certainly the modifications 
iof it under which we at present find it, the method of 
conserving it in the present owner, and of translating 
it from man to man, are entirely derived from society, 
and are some of those civil advantages in exchange for 
wliicli every individual has resigned a part of his 
natural liberty.-'* From the later passage to which 
he refers it is clear that he regards the natural right 
of property as being merely the right of possession 
which ^* continued for the same time only that the act 
of possession lasted,''^ whereas the permanent right 
of property^ and with it the rights of inheritance and 
bequest, is **no natural, but merely a civil right.''® 
Nevertheless the natural origin, such as it is, of prop- 
erty is sufficient to make the laws of England, ' * in point 
of honour and justice, extremely watchful in ascertain- 
ing and protecting this right. " ^ After referring to 
Magna Charta and other statutes which protect the 
subject against arbitrary dispossession by the execu- 
tive, he proceeds as follows : 

So greatj moreover, is the regard of the law for private 
property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; 
no, not even for the general good of the whole community. If 
a new road, for instance, were to be made through the grounds 
of a private person, it might perhaps be extremely beneficial to 

3 Commentaries, i. 123. 5 Commentaries, ii. 3. 

4 Commentaries, i. 138. 6 Comm.entaries, ii. 11. 

7 Commentaries, i. 138. 



212 PKOPEETY 

the public; but the law permits no man, or set of men, to do) 
this without consent of the owner of the land. In vain it may ' 
be urged, that the good of the individual ought to yield to that : 
of the community; for it would be dangerous to allow any 
private man, or even any public tribunal, to be the judge of ! 
this common good, and to decide whether it be expedient or no. . 
Besides the public good is in nothing more essentially inter- ■ 
ested, than in the protection of every individual's private i 
rights, as modelled by the municipal law. In this and similar • 
cases, the legislature alone can, and indeed frequently does, , 
interpose, and compel the individual to acquiesce. But how 
does it interpose and compel? Not hy absolutely stripping 
the subject of his property in an arbitrary manner; but by 
giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for the injury 
thereby sustained. The public is now considered as an indi- 
vidual, treating with an individual for an exchange. All that 
the legislature does, is to oblige the owner to alienate his 
possessions for a reasonable price; and even this is an exer- 
tion of power which the legislature indulges with caution, 
and which nothing but the legislature can perform.® 

I have set out at length this characteristic passage 
because it would be impossible to summarize it so as 
fairly to represent the adroit combination which it 
contains of different points of view. In spite of his 
sweeping assertion elsewhere of the supreme author- 
ity of the law of nature, he had no less doubt of the 
sovereignty of Parliament/ but he shrinks from bring- 
ing these two authorities into conflict. But reading 
between the lines one can feel sure that if the question 
had been forced on him, * * Can the legislature take away 
the right of property, founded in the law of nature, 
as in some sense you say it is I'' he would at any rate 
have admitted that there was no tribunal in the land 

8 Commientaries, i. 139. 

9 Commentaries, i. 186: "An Act of Parliament, thus made, is the 
exercise of the highest authority that this kingdom acknowledges upon 
earth. It hath power to bind every subject in the land, and the domin- 
ions thereunto belonging; nay, even the King himself, if particularly 
named therein." 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 213 

A^Meh could call in question such an exercise of its 
power. He will not allow himself to nse so crude a 
.Yord as ^'expropriation/' but when the legislature 
)bliges the owner ^*to alienate his possessions for a 
.reasonable price '^ this is nothing but expropriation 
i^ith due compensation. It is a misrepresentation to 
(speak in this connexion of the public ** treating with 
|in individual for an exchange." 
k The practice of expropriation by Act of Parliament 
>f/here land was needed for the construction of works 
>f public utility, such as roads and canals, was already 
weR established in Blackstone's day, and received an 
enormous extension in the period of railway building. 
rhe process of private bill legislation gradually as- 
sumed a judicial character, intended to secure that 
compulsory powers should not be granted unnecessa- 
rily nor be more extensive than the needs of the case 
required. In course of time the clauses in private 
bills conferring and defining these powers and the 
procedure for determining the compensation, assumed 
a common form, which was ultimately stereotyped in 
the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845. This Act 
forms a code to be adopted wherever compulsory 
powers of taking land are sought, but it does not do 
away with the necessity of a special Act in order to 
confer these powers on the promoters of any under- 
taking, who are still called upon to prove to a Par- 
liamentary committee the utility of the proposed 
undertaking and the necessity of taking particular 
lands for the purposes of it. The more modern method 
of proceeding by provisional order (an order made by 
the authority of some Government such as the Local 
Government Board or the Board of Trade) does not 
m general dispense with the need of Parliamentary 
sanction ; for the provisional order is of no force until 



214 PKOPEETY 

confirmed by Act of Parliament/^ It is a new depar- 
ture that in more recent years the power of compulsory 
taking has been conferred by Statute without the neces- 
sity of Parliamentary sanction in each particular case. 
Thus under the Light Eailways Act, 1896, s. 10, an 
order of the Light Railway Commissioners confirmed 
by the Board of Trade is to ^*have effect as if enacted 
by Parliament, and shall be conclusive evidence that 
all requirements of this Act in respect of proceedings 
required to be taken before the making of the Order 
have been complied with.''^^ 

The compensation allowed to the expropriated owner 
has been on no ungenerous scale. Not only is he al- 
lowed the fair market value of what is taken, but he 
receives a further allowance for the prejudice which 
may be caused by severance, and by the injurious 
effect which the working of the undertaking may have 
on the land which he retains. Against this, except in 
one or two cases, no set-off is to be made for the bene- 
fit which his remaining lands may get.^^ Under the 
Act of 1845 the owner can in most cases insist on hav- 
ing the amount determined by a jury, a tribunal not 
likely to put too low a value on proprietary rights, 
but in many instances this is excluded by more recent 
legislation. Under that Act too, though without any 

10 See, for instance, Public Health Act, 1875, ss. 176, 297. 

11 See also Local Government Act, 1894, s. 9 ; Small Holdings Act, 
1908, s. 39; Housing and Town Planning Act, 1909, 1st Schedule, clause 

2 (where statutory force is given to an order made by the local authority 1 
and confirmed by the Local Grovernment Board, and it is provided that I 
the confirmation by the Board shall be conclusive evidence that the order i 
has been duly made and is within the powers of the Act). ' 

12 Light Railways Act, 1896, s. 13: "In determining the amount of 
compensation, the arbitrator shall have regard to the extent to which 
the remaining and contiguous lands and hereditaments belonging to the 
same proprietor may be benefited by the proposed railway." The Hous- 
ing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, s. 38 (8) and the Housing and 
Town Planning Act, 1909, s. 58 (3) embody to some extent the "better 
ment" principle. 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 215 

utliority expressed in it, the practice grew up of 
liowing an addition of 10 per cent to the assessed 
aluej as a solatinm for the compulsory expropriation, 
ut this addition has been excluded in a number of 
ecent Acts.^^ 

Bentham and Austin have banished natural rights 
rom our text-books, and to an English lawyer at the 
resent day the taldng of private property for public 
urposes is not founded on any special right of the 
jltate, but is regarded as merely one consequence of 
%ie sovereignty of Parliament, nor is there any rule 
If law which binds Parliament to require compensa- 
|ion to be given. It is given because it is just and expe- 
|ient that it should be given. If Parliament should 
lass an expropriating Act without providing for com- 
pensation, no English Court could call its validity in 
|uestion. 
Very different has been the case in the United States 
f America. Nowhere w^as Blackstone 's work received 
vith greater respect ; and his doctrine of natural 
ights, which hovered on the borderland of law and 
jthics, was crystallized in the Federal Constitution, 
IS well as in the Constitutions of most of the States, 
nto a rule of law limiting the competence of the legis- 
atures. Thus the fifth of the Amendments of the 
J'ederal Constitution adopted in 1791 (commonly called 
in America *Hhe Bill of Rights") provided that **No 
person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or prop- 
erty without due process of law; nor shall private 
property be taken for public use without just compen- 
jsation/'-* The result is that in the United States ex- 

I 13 Local Government Act, 1894, 9. 9; Small Holdings Act, 1908, s. 39; 
[Bfousing and Town Planning Act, 1909, l8t Schedule, clause 3. 
[ i*Cf. Ely, Property and Contract (Macmillan, 1914). Personal 
security, personal liberty, and the right of private property are the 
shree "absolute rights" of individuals enumerated by Blackstone {Com- 
'nentaries^ L 123-140). 



216 PEOPEETY 

propriation for public purposes is regarded as made 
under a specific power of the Union or the State, the 
right of ** eminent domain," and the conditions under 
which this power can be exercised have formed the sub- 
ject of judicial decision in the Federal and State 
Courts. An Act of the Legislature depriving a citizen 
of his property which failed to comply with these con- 
ditions would be held void unless it fell within some 
other recognized power such as the taxing power or the 
** police power." The existence of these powders neces- 
sarily prevents the constitutional guarantees given to 
private property from being construed literally: no 
State could exist without a power to take part of the 
property of individuals by way of taxation for public 
purposes, or without a power of regulating to some 
extent the use of private property in the public interest, 
although such regulation must inevitably interfere with 
the liberty of private use, and thus diminish the profits 
of private enjoyment. But where, as in the United 
States, the Legislature is confined to acting within the 
scope of specific powers, the Courts are called upon to 
define and limit that scope in such a way as not to 
render nugatory the safeguard which the Constitution 
affords to private property. The American law re- 
ports are full of decisions (not always easy to recon-. 
cile) on the constitutionality of all manner of legis- 
lation on such subjects as the regulation of buildings, 
the prohibition of truck, hours of labour in factories, 
and workmen's compensation. A Federal income tax 
has been made possible only by an amendment of the 
T^'eder^ Constitution, and an amendment of the Con- 
stitution^"^ the State of New York was necessary in 
order to^^^^^ valid a law compelling employers to 
insure t}r^'' workmen. ^ ^ ^ 

"With 1® ^^^ power of Parliament to tax has, it is 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 217 



Tie, been to some extent differentiated from its gen- 

:al legislative power by the constitutional convention 

liich subordinated the powers of the House of Lords 

) those of the House of Commons in the matter of 

loney bills. The Parliament Act, 1911, has made the 

[ouse of Conunons the sole authority in this respect, 

fas made its authority a part of the law of the Con- 

litution, and has attempted to give a legal definition 

|f a money bill, which is probably narrower than the 

[inception which governed the constitutional conven- 

|on. But the decision whether a Bill passed by the 

|onimons is a money bill within the meaning of the 

iLct is left not to the Law Courts but to the Speaker ; 

|nd no tests have been imposed similar to that of 

Iquality of burden, in virtue of which some American 

fyourts have held invalid an Act imposing death duties 

nly on estates above a certain amoimt. The steep 

raduations of death duties and income tax which we 

ave seen in recent years are hampered by no con- 

titutional convention or rule of law. 

The ^* police power ^' as a separate department of 
legislation is even more unfamiliar to us than that of 
!* eminent domain. '* Yet legislation of this type is 
familiar and increasing. The whole of our factory 
legislation, for instance, is an interference (mainly 
pth freedom of contract and partly with property) 
^iiich under a Constitution which guarantees the in- 
^-iolability of property and contract, would need justi- 
fication, if it could be justified at all, as an exercise 
JL the ** police power" in the interests of public wel- 
fare. Obvious instances of interference with purely 
proprietary rights are the provisions of the Public 
Health Acts, which require persons building on their 
3wn land to submit plans for approval to a local 
authority, and to conform to regulations intended to 



218 PROPERTY 

secure sanitary conditions. The Housing and Town i 
Planning Act, 1909, gives drastic powers to the local 1 
authority to close and demolish dwellings dangerous.^ 
to health, subject to an appeal to the Local Govern- - 
ment Board, but without allowing the owner recourse i 
to the Law Courts. As against the tendency of this 
and much other similar legislation, we may note the 
jjrovisions of the Licensing Act, 1904,^^ which give ai 
right of compensation to the owner of licensed prem- 
ises who is refused a renewal. In this case, if we used I 
the American classification, we might say that the 
right of eminent domain has been substituted for the 
police power. 

n 1 



If we ask what is included in the rights of property,! 
we shall get little guidance from general maxims, 
whether of a merely popular kind, such as **A man 
may do as he wills with his own,'' or of a more legal 
stamp, like the Roman law tag, sic utere tuo ut alienum 
non laedas. For it is not in truth the material object 
which is a man's own, but the rights which the law 
gives him in respect of it; nor is it every damage to 
the interests of another which the law forbids, but 
only the violation of another's legal rights. To say 
that he may do as he wills with his own is therefore 
no more than to say that he may do what the law per- 
mits ; and to say that he must not harm that which is 
another's, is merely to say that he must not infringe 
the legally protected interests of another. 

Some legal wrongs are so well defined that it would 
not occur to any one to excuse them by a jjlea of the 

15 Now embodied in the Licensing (ConBolidation) Act, 1910, ss. 20, 
21. Ilie compensation is provided by a charge levied on licensed prem- 
itiea in the area. 



LAW OF PROPERTY IN ENGLAND 219 

ercise of the rights of property: it would be childish 

argue that a murder was more excusable when com- 

Ltted wdth the murderer's own pistol than mth 

stolen one. On the other hand, where it is clear that 

> legal wrong is done, it is superfluous to rely on 

oprietary right as a defence. Our law, in the ab- 

nce of special circumstances, imposes no duty of 

tive assistance, however great the harm which will 

me to another from its refusal. It is no crime to 

ive a man to drown, where one is in no way respon- 

ble for the danger in which he is placed. But if in 

?lch circumstances it was sought to make a man liable 

• ^- his neglect, it would be unnecessary for him to 

lid himself on the ground that he was concerned 

protect his clothes from injury, or that he was 

ititled to retain exclusive possession of the rope 

hich he had at hand. 

Yet the English maxim has a certain significance, 
lasmuch as in the clash of interests, the rights of 
roperty have a certain solidity, or even elasticity, 
hich will enable them to carrv the dav against claims 
,^ss well defined. Wliile the law holds some acts 
learly wrongful, others clearly innocent, it seems to 
Bcognize an intermediate class of conduct, which will 
ivolve liability in the absence of a just cause or 
xcuse, and some judges have gone so far as to lay 
: down that all conduct by which harm is intentionally 
aused to another, though it falls within none of the 
tereotyped categories of wrongdoing, will prima facie 
ivolve such liability. It is not material to consider 
ere how far this doctrine is sufficiently foimded on 
recedent, or Avhether it is likely to be finally accepted. 
>ut it is worth noting that the exercise of proprietary 
ights seems to be one case of the just cause or excuse, 
^hich will avail against such a prima facie liability, 



220 PEOPEETY t 

and thus forms a limit in one direction to the exten- 
sion of the doctrine. Neighbouring owners, by the.^ 
mere fact of their ownership, have certain limitedl 
rights and duties towards each other. Thus, while my^| 
neighbour is entitled to such support from my soil ass 
is necessary to keep his land in its natural state from^ 
subsidence,^® he is not entitled (in the absence of granti 
or prescription) to such further support as may bes 
necessary to the safety of any buildings which he^ 
may choose to erect. If, then, I excavate on my own: 
ground, with the result (and even, it would seem, withi 
the object) of causing his buildings to collapse, I have 
done nothing to interfere with any defined right of his,, 
and if he should seek to hold me liable for wilfully 
or negligently causing him damage, it is a complete 
answer that I was merely exercising my own proprie- 
tary rights. Similarly, since English law recognizes i 
no such right (apart from contract) as that of mere; 
amenity, I may intercept my neighbour's view by, 
erecting a hideous building. Unless he has acquired; 
(by grant or by lapse of time) a right to the light nec- 
essary for comfort or convenience of his dwelling- 
house or business premises, I may even cut off his 
light. The right of owners to the flow of a natural 
stream in a defined channel is well recognized, but 
there is no corresponding right to receive water perco- 
lating beneath the surface, so that an owner was held 
free from liability who made borings on his land with 
the result of interfering with the water-supply of a 
large city, and the allegation that his conduct was 

16 This is an instance of what is technically known to English lawyers 
as a natural right, in the sense of a right which attaches to property 
under normal conditions, as opposed to a right such as an easement 
which can be acquired only by grant or prescription. This has of course 
nothing to do with the "natural rights" of legal-philosophical specula- 
tion. 



LAW OF PEOPEETY IN ENGLAND 221 

intended to compel the local authority to purchase his 
property was held to be irrelevant. 

Interference with the rights of the owner, apart 
from the punishment for misappropriation (still dis- 
Iproportionately severe in comparison with the penal- 
ities for all except the most serious offences against 
|the person), and for wilful and substantial damage, is 
not a criminal offence, and it is not creditable to the 
pandowners of this country that they should still seek 
Ito intimidate the public by what Professor Maitland 
jwel] called the ^^ wooden falsehood,'' ** Trespassers 
fwili be prosecuted." On the other hand, our civil law 
!of trespass is singularly sweeping in its recognition 
of the owner's right to exclude. Every entry on land 
without authority is a trespass, for which the Courts 
will give at any rate the remedy of nominal damages, 
and which the owner and his servants may resist or 
put an end to by the forcible removal of the trespasser. 
In point of fact the acquiescence or good feeling of 
waers of uncultivated land, except where the claims of 
sport have been treated as paramount, have prevented 
the existence of these legal rights from being alto- 
gether intolerable. It is significant that in recent 
years the Courts have refused, in more than one case, 
to give to the owner the discretionary remedy of an 
injunction to restrain innocent trespass. 

Towards the public at large the owner of land and 
buildings owes at common law the duty of seeing that 
they do not become a source of danger to persons 
lawfully passing on the highway by reason of want of 
repair, obstruction, unfenced excavations, or the like. 
He must avoid pollution of the air or running water. 
But apart from restrictions such as these, he is under 
no general duty to the public, which has no right to 
have the countryside preserved free from disfigure- 



222 PEOPEETY ^ 

ment, if we except the recent legislation which has 
conferred on local bodies the power to restrain the^> 
exhibition of disfiguring advertisements." Even onjj 
public ways the rights of the public are very limited. y?; 
In general the soil of the highway remains the prop-^; 
erty of the adjacent owner, though in urban districts,! i 
it has been vested in the local authority by Statute, t' 
to such limited extent as is necessary in order to3 
enable it to perform its duties of repair, sewering, and,^ ■ 
the like. The public right is a right of passage onlyyn 
and a person may be a trespasser on the highway ifnj 
he uses it for some other purpose, such as watching^, 
the operations of the adjacent owner or his servants ? 
upon his land. In this respect the rights of the public y -I 
stand on a lower level than those of an owner, f orj 
there is no ** right of privacy" which entitles one 
OA\mer to complain of being overlooked by his neigh- 
bour. In point of security the rights of the public to , , 
footpaths leave much to be desired. It is true that 
they are not liable to be extinguished by non-user for 
any length of time. But the evidence of their exist- j 
ence depends in most cases on the fact of user, so |; 
that disuse for any considerable time may make the V 
proof of their existence difficult or impossible. Thel 
posting of threatening notices by an influential owner, ■( 
interference by his keepers, and actual blocking up 
may interrupt the public enjoyment so long, that when; 
at last some individual undertakes the assertion of the ■ i 
public right, the evidence of it may be too doubtful to 
support his case. It is only in quite recent times that > 
local authorities have been entrusted with the duty of 
upholding public rights of way. Further, while the 
mere enjoyment of a private *' easement" of way for, 

17 Advertisements Regulation Act, 1907; Ancient Monuments Act, 
1913, s. 18. 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 223 

I certain time, and nnder certain conditions, renders 
;he right indefeasible, the enjoyment by the pnblic for 
Jmy length of time in itself gives no right, bnt merely 
jiffords a presumption that the owner has ** dedicated" 
'he way to the pnblic, a presumption which may be 
rebutted by showing that the land was so settled as 
to be in the hands of a limited owner who had no 
Jpower to make the dedication.^^ Lastly, it may be 
iaoticed that a public way may be closed by an order 
ibf the competent authority, not only in consideration 
Ipf a substituted way, but even on the mere ground 
'that it is unnecessary, and that in such a case no com- 
Ipensation is paid by the private owner, who obtains a 
jvaluable accession to his property. In this respect 
ithe public right is less favourably regarded than the 
right of the expropriated owner in case of compulsory 
purchase. 

I The lands knoA^m as ^^ Commons'' are called so not 
because they are in law common to the public, or even 
to the members of any community, but because a num- 
ber of persons enjoy in common certain rights, usually 
rights of pasture, over them. Whether or not there 
ever was in England such a thing as a village com- 
munity, it is at any rate certain that since English 
law took definite shape, rights of common have been 
not communal rights but groups of individual rights. 
The land itself was in most cases regarded as belonging 
to one person, the lord of the manor, while the tenants 
of the manor, or some class of tenants, shared with 
him certain rights over the land. In other cases the 
land was owned and cultivated in severalty by nu- 
merous owners, sometimes with periodical re-allot- 

18 A Bill Intended to put public rights of way in respect of their 
creation by long enjoyment on a footing similar to that of private rights 
of way, has been introduced in Parliament more than once in the last 
few years, but has not so far found its way to the Statute Book, 



224 PKOPEETY d 

M 

ment, and all enjoyed rights of pasture over so mnclii! 
of the land as in accordance with the agricnltnre systemii 
of the time was lying fallow. The enclosure of the?! 
waste land of a manor, on condition that enough wa^ 
left for the exercise of the common rights, had beemj 
allowed by the Statute of Merton, 1235,^^ but this con- j 
dition became more and more difficult to fulfil, and ini 
the eighteenth century the policy of enclosure by Actt 
of Parliament converted a large proportion of the com- 
mon lands of the country into land held iii severalty. 
In the course of the nineteenth century it came to be 
seen that, though the rights of the owners of the soill 
and of the commoners were the only rights known to) 
the law, yet the public living in the neighbourhood were, , 
in fact, largely interested in the maintenance of the un- 
enclosed commons. Some recognition of this principle 
is already to be found in the Enclosure Act, 1845, but 
it received full effect only in the Commons Act, 1876,.! 
which recited that **it is expedient that enclosure ini! 
severalty, as opposed to regulation of Commons, should! 
not hereafter be made, unless it can be proved to thei 
satisfaction of the said Enclosure Commissioners and^ 
of Parliament that such inclosure will be of benefit to 
the neighbourhood, as well as to private interests and 
to those who are legally interested in any such Com- 
mons.'' The effect of this and succeeding enactments 
has been practically to stop the policy of enclosure, and 
to substitute that of regulation, which, while respecting 
existing private rights, has preserved and improved 
the public enjoyment.^" 

19 The provision was practically repealed by the Commons Act, 1898, 
which forbids enclosure under the Statute of Merton except with the 
consent of the Board of Agriculture, and makes it subject to the same 
conditions under which enclosure under the Enclosure Acts can take place. 

20 Commons within the Metropolitan Police Area had already been 
exempted from the ordinary Enclosure Acts, by the Metropolitan Com- 
mons Act, 1866, and their regulation and preservation is provided for 
by the Metropolitan Commons Act, 1866 to 1898. 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 225 



ni 



In most discussions of the rights of property an 
assumption is commonly made that the only parties to 
the contest are the State (sometimes called Society) 
and the individual, who are supposed to stand facing 
one another with nothing between. It is assumed too 
that private property means individual property, and 
that such cases as we may find of property vested in or 
held for the benefit of groups, or appropriated to pur- 
poses rather than destined for the use of individuals, 
may be disregarded as exceptional, or may be brought 
into line as being in ultimate analysis mere instances 
either of individual or of State property. Yet the 
truth seems to be that at no time has this clear 
dichotomy been possible; and though in most modern 
countries there have been strong tendencies towards 
the individualisation of private property, at the same 
time and especially in the most recent times in England, 
there have been countercurrents no less strong. 

That the dilemma. State or individual! should have 
been so prominent is due above all to two causes. In 
the first place, it afforded what seemed strong ground 
to either side in the controversy. The individualist 
could oppose the natural rights of the individual to the 
conventional and artificial character of the State: the 
upholder of State rights could point to the insignifi- 
cance of merely individual interests as against the 
claims of ^^ Society,'' while the claims of all smaller 
societies were ignored. In the second place, our politi- 
cal thinking has proceeded too much in terms taken 
from the City State, in which societies between the 
State and the individual were suppressed or ignored, 



226 PEOPEETY 

and from Eoman law, itself a prodnct of the City State, 
with its clear-cut divisions between jus publicum and 
jus privatum, and its sharply outlined theory of 
property. 

Yet even Eoman law retained or developed rules 
which prevented property from being regarded as a 
merely individual right. True, the shadowy rights of 
the gentiles had disappeared by the classical period: 
the agnati might be excluded by will, and even sons and 
daughters might be disinherited, if the appropriate 
formulae were employed. But by the fiction, which the 
tribunals were successfully invited to adopt, that a 
testator who had entirely excluded his nearest relations 
from all share in his property had shown himself to be 
insane by making so undutiful a will, their right to at 
least a share — legitima pars — of the succession was 
re-established. The newer form of marriage which 
became normal by the end of the Eepublic deprived the 
husband of the control over the wife's property which 
he had at an earlier period, and excluded her from suc- 
cession to his estate among the sui heredes ; but the in- 
stitution of the dos gave the husband an interest in, 
and power of administering, property coming from her 
or her family, while safeguarding it against his dis- 
positions and the claims of his creditors; and the 
donatio propter nuptias made it possible to subject 
property of the husband to a similar regime. Lastly, 
a man's relatives were able by the appointment of a 
curator to prevent the dissipation of his property, not 
only in case of his insanity but also if he became a 
spendthrift. 

In countries not subject to the English com^mon law, 
the family character of property has been emphasised 
by institutions similar to these, whether based on the 



LAW OF PKOPERTY IN ENGLAND 227 

traditions of Roman, or derived from native law.^^ In 
England, the whole conrse of development has, at least 
on the surface, been in the direction of freeing the 
individual in dealing with his property from all family 
claims. We have never adopted the institution of the 
spendthrift's curator, and the right of wife and chil- 
dren to a ^treasonable part'' of the goods of the de- 
ceased, which was probably once universal but had 
conie to be regarded as a custom of particular localities, 
w^as entirely abolished before the end of the first quar- 
ter of the eighteenth century. The power of making a 
will was extended to owners of land, partially in the 
sixteenth, and completely in the seventeenth century. 
But marriage had important effects on proprietary 
rights, which survived till a much later date. On the 
one hand, the wife became entitled on the husband's 
death to one-third of his freehold land, and this right 
of dower could not be defeated by him without her 
consent, not even by his selling the land. On the other 
hand, the husband became absolute owner of her per- 
sonal property; he became entitled to her real estate 
during the marriage, and to a further right during his 
life, if issue vv^as born ; and the wife was deprived of all 
power of disposition except with his consent as long 
as the marriage lasted. These rules of the matrimonial 
regime were attributed to the *^ unity of person" of 
husband and wife. They have been in substance swept 
away by the reforms of the nineteenth century ; by the 
Dower Act, 1833, the husband was enabled to destroy 
the wife's right of dower by any disposition in his life- 
time, or by his will ; half a century later, by the Married 
Women's Property Act, 1882, the whole of a married 

21 Scotland still recognises the indefeasible rights of widow and chil- 
dren ( jus relictae and legition ) , as well as the cura prodigi, and some 
provisions of the same kind have been introduced in some of the United 

States. 



228 PEOPERTY 

woman's property was made her ** separate estate/' 
with full power of disposition inter vivos or by will 
Thus we seem to have arrived at an extremely indi- 
vidualistic form of private property, recognising no 
claims of the family except in the rules of intestate 
succession, which can always be overridden by the 
owner's dispositions. This is, however, only to look 
at one side of the matter. It assumes that the indi- 
vidual is what is called an absolute owner, including 
under that term the tenant of land in fee- simple. As a 
matter of fact English law has always been extraor- 
dinarily favourable to the recognition of limited own- 
ership or limited interests in property, real or personal,^ 
It is true that the attempt of the legislature made by 
the Statute de Donisi in 1285 to protect estates tail, i.e, 
freehold estates given so as to pass in a strict line of 
descent, was defeated by legal fictions before the end of 
the Middle Ages, but the ingenuity of conveyancers gave 
renewed effect to the wishes of the land-owning class 
by the device of the ** strict settlement," under which, 
so far as possible, the actual possession and enjoyment 
of land was given to persons who had no more than a 
life tenancy, while the power of disposing of the inheri- 
tance depended on the concurrence of the life-tenant 
and the tenant in tail in remainder (usually his eldest 
son), when the latter reached the age of twenty-one. 
In practice this power has usually been exercised not 
for the purpose of freeing the land from the fetters of 
the settlement, but in order to tie it up by a fresh settle- 
ment for another generation. Thus the land of the 
country has been for the most part converted into a 
number of family domains, each under the government 
of a limited monarchy, and serving social and politi- 
cal no less than economic purposes. ** Property for 
power" was strengthened by a system which protected 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 229 

the domain from the folly or improvidence of its tem- 
porary holder, and which excluded younger children 
from succession to anything more than a sum of money 
charged on the property. 

The system was left untouched by the legislation 
which followed the Reform Act of 1832, and indeed was 
if anything facilitated by reforms of procedure in that 
period. Only a partial satisfaction of the individualist 
demand for *^free land" was given by the Settled Land 
ActSy 1882-1890, which permitted the sale of settled 
land upon condition that the purchase money was 
brought into settlement, and it needed the stimulus of 
heavy death duties (first made approximately equal in 
1894 for land and personal property) and of the special 
land taxation of 1909-1910 to induce any considerable 
break-up of estates. "Whether in the future the system 
of family estates can still be made to serve purposes 
of sufficient public advantage to secure its survival 
for an indefinite time, in view of its obvious evils, is a 
question beyond the scope of this essay; it is at any 
rate noteworthy that the coljectivist tendencies of 
recent times have taken away the strength of merely 
individualist attacks on the law of primogeniture and 
the custom of settlement, and have aimed rather at 
securing rights other than ownership to occupiers and 
would-be occupiers of land; as, for instance, by the 
Agricultural Holdings Acts and Small Holdings Acts. 

Settlements of money and property other than land, 
effected by a different legal mechanism, have served a 
smilar purpose in protecting the family against the 
individual, but except so far as they have been ancillary 
to land settlements are of less importance in the struc- 
ture of society as a whole. Yet such a settlement, when 
it comprises a great business, and especially with the 
assistance of the institution of the ^'private company," 



230 PEOPERTY 

may be of considerable importance in securing the con- 
tinuity and permanence of commercial and industrial 
power. 

Turning aside from these cases of property which 
belong rather to kinship groups than to individuals, 
we may take note of the extent to which property 
under devices ancient or modern has been and is being 
permanently assigned to public ends without being 
State property. Our common law of corporations took 
shape in times no longer modern, and enabled groups 
of men, and those who from time to time should succeed 
them, or the series of successive holders of an office, 
to be regarded as immortal persons capable of o^vn- 
ing property. The Church of England is not such a 
corporation, but within it are numerous corporations 
(either ** aggregate" such as a Dean and Chapter, or 
*^sole" such as a Bishop or incumbent) who are the 
holders of the property commonly called Church 
property. Our ancient Universities and the Colleges 
within them are equally the holders of property which 
is not the property of the individuals who compose 
those bodies. Yet none of this is State property, how- 
ever much modern legislation may have imposed regu- 
lations and restrictions in order to safeguard it from 
mismanagement or diversion. These may be regarded 
as the purest types of property-holding bodies whose 
functions are public in the sense that they do not exist 
fo'r purposes of private gain, and who nevertheless can 
in no sense be treated as mere delegates or agents of 
the State authority. It is beside the mark to say they 
furnish the livelihood of their members, or some of 
them, for the State too provides the salaries of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and of the village post- 
man; or that the State has power by legislation to 
control or take away their property, for it can do as 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 231 

aucli for the most private property of any individual. 
No doubt a Corporation may be nothing more than 
L cog-wheel in the Government machinery, like the 

ommissioners of Woods and Forests or the Post- 
naster-General, or it may be a mere device for the 
."urtherance of individual profit, like the majority of 
he modern Companies incorporated with limited lia- 
;.}iiity. Yet we must guard on the one hand against 
j;hinking that Government functions necessarily mean 
State functions, or if we insist on identifying Govern- 
3 lent and State, we must be prepared to see the State 
making many bodily forms which seem to have an inde- 
pendent existence. We may see a municipal Corpora- 
Mon at law with the Crown as to the extent of its 
Ipowers, or opposing a Bill promoted by a neighbouring 
iCorporation ; or a ** State" litigating a boundary dis- 
Ipute with another ^ ^ State '^ in the same Dominion, or 
ithe Trustees of the British Museum disputing with the 
iCrown the title to a prehistoric hoard. On the other 
ihand, bodies which pay, or hope to pay, dividends to 
jtheir shareholders may exist for the furtherance of 
public purposes, like Eailway Companies or the 
Water Board, and be subject to regulations intended to 
secure their adequate subservience to the public inter- 
est. The Bank of England, by virtue alike of the 
privileges conferred and the restrictions imposed by 
j Statute, fills a unique place in the national economy; 
ithe Chartered Company of British South Africa gov- 
1 erns a territory far larger than the British Islands ; yet 
I each is a Company of stock- or shareholders. 
I Not only may the mechanism devised in the first in- 
stance for purposes of private gain be employed for 
the incorporation of societies whose property and 
activities are directed to public objects, as when a body 
for the furtherance of education is incorporated under 



232 PEOPEETY I 

the Companies Act, 1908, or the Industrial and Provi- ^ 
dent Societies Act, 1893; but without incorporation,, 
our law of trusts allows property to be placed by gift or ; 
bequest in the hands of trustees for the promotion of all 
manner of purposes. A charitable trust is sometimes 
called by lawyers a public trust, as opposed to the 
** private" trust, which is one for the benefit of individ- 
uals; yet no co-operation of any organ of the State is 
necessary for its creation, though when once created it 
will as a rule come under the supervision and control of 
the Charity Commissioners, or in the case of an educa« 
tional charity, of the Board of Education. A char- 
itable purpose in the legal sense includes not only the 
relief of poverty, but religious and education purposes, 
and such other purposes beneficial to the public as are 
sufficiently analogous to these.^^ Such trusts are treated 
with special favour by the law; their creation is ex- 
empted from the rule against perpetuities which for- 
bids the tying up of property for an indefinite period, 
and their income is not subject to the payment of 
income-tax. On the other hand, the conveyance of land 
for charitable purposes is subject to somewhat trouble- 
some formalities under special legislation dating from 
the early eighteenth century f^ but the prohibition 
against gifts by will for the like purposes has in recent 
times been converted into a requirement that land so 
left shall be sold unless it is required for actual occu- 
pation. 

Hardly separable from the dedication of property to 
a purpose by means of a trust is the part which the law 

22 A gift by will to the Society for the Abolition of Vivisection has 
been held to be charitable. 

23 This restriction on conveyances for charitable purposes is at the 
present day of much greater importance in practice than the old law of 
mortmain properly so called, which dates from the thirteenth century 
and forbids conveyance of land to a corporation, but from which there 
are numerous exemptions by Act of Parliament or licence from the Crown. 



LAW OF PEOPEETY IN ENGLAND 233 

of trusts plays in enabling societies which are unincor- 
porated to hold property. For the carrying out of its 
: {objects a society can hardly exist without some prop- 
erty, be it only the periodical contributions of its mem- 
bers. If the society is debarred from incorporation by 
law (as is the case with Trade Unions), or does not 
think it worth while to undergo the expense and formal- 
ities of incorporation, it is not a body which can directly 
|hoid property. Whatever is its property (in the popu- 
llar sense of the word) must then be held by one or 
fmore individuals who, whether called so or not, will in 
I fact be its trustees. They will hold the property upon 
I trust— not sirnply for the members as individuals, for 
in that case each member could insist on a division — 
I but upon trust for the members as members of the 
society, to be used and applied for its objects and in 
accordance with its rules. In practice the result of this 
arrangement hardly differs from the holding of prop- 
|erty by a corporate body; for the society's property in 
the hands of its trustees will be liable on principle to the" 
debts and obligations incurred on behalf of the society 
hj its officers, and will be subject to such control by the 
society or its governing body as the society's rules may 
provide. We have here a ** purpose-trust" and some- 
thing more. A Nonconformist place of worship, and 
the endowments devoted to its maintenance and the 
ministrations in it, from one point of view are simply 
property bound by a trust for a religious purpose ; but 
from another they form the property of a religious 
society. In this, as in many other instances, the pur- 
pose for which the society exists is one which falls 
under the legal category of charity. But there is 
nothing to prevent a society formed for any lawful 
purpose, though not charitable, from holding property 
in the same way, so long as it is not a case of a gift or 



234 PEOPEBTY 

bequest in terms wMch are intended to create a perma- 
nent endowment and so offend against the rule against 
perpetuities. Trade Unions, for instance, are not 
charities, but have enjoyed and extensively exercised 
the power to hold property through the medium of 
trustees ever since their purposes were freed from 
illegality in 1871. 

It may be worth while to attempt to state briefly the 
results of a somewhat discursive survey of a consider- 
able mass of detail. In the first place our constitutional 
law has made no attempt to place rights of property in 
an exceptional position, as against the sovereignty of 
Parliament; to that sovereignty they, like all other 
legal rights, must give way; and the power to expro- 
priate, to tax, and to regulate are merely manifesta- 
tions of it, not defined and limited powers which the 
legislature exceeds at its peril. The extent and manner 
of their exercise has varied from time to time, in ac- 
cordance with changing views of policy: even the 
power of expropriation has in recent years been dele- 
gated to subordinate authorities, and the liberality with 
which compensation was formerly given has in some 
cases been restricted. 

Turning to the consideration of the content of the 
right of property and its relation to the interests of 
others, we saw that while little guidance can be ob- 
tained from general maxims, yet in some ways the 
right of property occupies a privileged position. Its 
exercise may serve as a just cause or excuse for con- 
duct prejudicial to the interests of others. The owner ^s 
absolute power of exclusion is tempered only by the 
owner's good feeling, and to some extent by judicial 
discretion. The duties of the owner towards neigh- 
bours and the public are of a narrowly limited kind, 
even if we take into account modern powers of regula- 



LAW OF PEOPERTY IN ENGLAND 235 

ion. Tlie legal protection, even of recognised public 
iglits, is comparatively weak. Yet in the case of 
fommons, legislation since the middle of the nineteenth 
ientury has given the protection of the law to public 
mjoyment, which had previously no legal basis at all. 
Lastly, we saw that private property is not merely a 
natter of the rights of individuals, and that our law 
)ffers remarkable facilities for making it subserve 
;)ther than individual interests. No other modern sys- 
tem has gone so far as ours in permitting ownership to 
)e so broken up into limited estates or interests as to 
nake property, for a large part of the owning and 
jspeciall}^ the land-owning classes, a family rather than 
|iii individual possession. The ease with which corpo- 
j:'ate character can be obtained under our modern law, 
the flexibility of the law of trusts, the freedom of asso- 
piation, have made possible the dedication of property 
|to purposes which outlive the individual, and may in a 
iDroad sense be called *' public,'' and its vesting in or 
bn behalf of groups bound together for their further- 
knee. Such property and such groups may stand in 
fepecial relations to the State, and may form the sub- 
jjeet of special legislation and regulation ; but we must 
guard ourselves against thinking that the property is 
jiState property, or that the groups who control it are 
jmere departments of the State, 



INDEX 



[Acts of Parliament, Blacks tone 

i on, 210 

Advent hope, influence on early 

Christian conceptions, 106, 113 
jiAgricultnre, influence on owner- 
1 ship among primitive tribes, 

16 
Alienation, 17 
Almsfi^iving. .See Charity 
"Ambroslaster," 113, 127, 129 
American Indians, North, 12, 15 
Ames, Dr. W., 147, 152, 156 
Amos, 93 

Anabaptists, 156, 170 
Anglicans, 144, 157, 166 
Animals, rudimentary property of 

higher, 8 
Apologists, second century, 104 
Appropriation, 41, 56, 57, 134 
Aristotle, xiv, 29 et seq., 37 et seq., 

115, 126, 135 
Articles of Keligion, Elizabethan, 

156 
Asceticism, 117, 182, 167, 168 
Australian tribes, individual and 

communal ownership of land 

among, 4, 13 et seq. 

Bankruptcy, 151 

Baxter, Richard, 145, 150 ei seq., 

167, 172 
Bennett, Dr. W. H., 93 et seq. 
Bentham, Jeremy, 52 
Bequest, liberty of, 47, 82 
Berens, 173 

"Betterment" principle, 215 n. 
Biblical ideas, xi, xvii, 89-122; 

Essays V. and VI. passim 



Bishops, Puritan revolt against 
powers of, 146-148, 152 

Blackstone, 209 et seq. 

Boas, 16 

Bondservice, 94 

Borneo, tribal land systems, 17 

Bosanquet, Professor, 60, 63 et seq. 

Brazil, land tenure, 16 

Brotherhood, xvii, 26, Essay IV. 
passim, 125 et seq., 133, 139, 
177, 188 

Browne, J., 14 

Bucer, Martin, 154 

Bucknell, Mr., 154 

Bullinger, 154-156, 158, 161 

Butler, Bishop, xx 

Calvin, 143, 146, 162 

Campbell, D,, 143 

Canon Law, 133 et seq., 136, 146 

et seq., 158, 174 
Capital. See also Production, 

means of 
functions, 37 

income, distinction from, 79 
Capitalist system, 24, 61, 66, 194 

Puritanism, influence of, 146, 162 
Carlyle, 154, 174 
Carriers, 16 

Cartwright, Thomas, 150 
Cecil, Lord Hugh, xix 
Character, private property and, 

xiv et seq., 37, 62-67, 78, 194. 

See also Personality 
Charitable trusts, 232 
Charity, xix, 101, 103, 125, 126 et 

seq., 136, 150, 163, 172, 176, 

185, 190. See also Poor relief 



237 



238 



PKOPEETY 



Charity (contd.) — 

early Christian view of, 101, 103 
Evangelical view of, 176 
Justice, an act of, xix, 130, 136, 

185, 190 
mediaeval conceptions of, 126 et 

seq. 
Puritan conception of, 150, 151, 
163, 171 
Charles I., poor relief under, 152 
Chattel slavery, 21 
Chilcotin, 15 

Christ. See Jesus Christ 
Christian conceptions — 

early church, xvii, 39, 97-122 
mediaeval, 125-139 
modern, xxiv 
post-Reformation, 143-177 
Puritan, 143-174 
Christian Communism. See Com- 
munism 
Church and State, 119, 144, 148 
failure of early church to co- 
ordinate religious and civic 
life, xiv, 121 
Church of England, property-hold- 
ing corporations within, 230 
Cicero, 111, 127, 182, 184 
Citizenship, 187 et seq., 199 
Civil wars in England, 148 
Clarendon, 148 

Clement of Alexandria, 105 et seq. 
Commandments. See Decalogue 
Common law, English, develop- 
ments of, as to property, 226 
Common pastures, 18, 223 

enclosure of, 20, 21, 223, 224 n. 
Commons Act, 224 
Commonwealth administration, 150, 

153, 155 
Communal ownership, xvii, 4, 12, 

33, 41, 61, 132, 199 
Communism, 24 et seq., 37, 63, 73, 
77 et seq., 127 
Aristotle's objections, 38 
Christian, early, 25, 127 
Plato's theory criticized, 25 



Communism (contd.) — 

Socialism, distinction from, 31 

Companies, joint-stock system, 10, . 
23 

Compensation for expropriation, , 
213, 214 

Competition, 67, 68, 195 

Control, 6. See also State control 

Conventional theory, patristic, 126 
et seq., 132, 135 

Co-operation, xviii, 75 et seq., 80, 
200 

Corporations, ownership of prop- 
erty by, 229 . 

Court of High Commission, 152 

Creeks, 16, 17 

Cromwell, 150, 155 

Cunningham, Archdeacon, 145 

Curr, 14 

Cyprian, 108 

Dargun, 16 

Darwin's theory, 59 j 

David, 91 | 

Davidson, Dr. A. B., 95 
Debt-slavery, 19 | 

Decalogue, 155, 165, 166, 175 ' 

Eighth Commandment, Hebrew > 
view of, 95 ; Puritan view of, , 
155 
Death duties, 228, 229 
Definitions of property, v&.rying, , 

208 
Defoe, 144, 150, 152 
Dickinson, Mr. Lowes, 65 
Dissent, 150, 154 
Distribution, right of, 134, 137 
Donatists, 131 
Dower Act, 227 
Dress — 

Puritan attitude, 161 

Quaker attitude, 167 

Wesley's attitude, 167 
Durkheim, 65 
Dyaks, 17 

"Economic rationalism," 160 
Eliot, Sir John, 154 



INDEX 



239 



JCly, Professor, 215 
Eminent domain," in the United 

States, 216 
Eaclosure Act, 224 
Equity, Laetantius's view of, 110 
E&tates, break-up of, 229 
Europe, Western, mediaeval organ- 
ization, 20 
Evangelical revival, 175 
Evolution of property, historical, 

3-33 
Expropriation, compulsory, 38, 213, 
214 
J compensation for, 214, 215 
j Eyre, 4, 14 
|i Ezekiel, 95 

Factory legislation, 200, 217 

Famiiists, 170 

Family, 26, 77, 82 

Family ownership, 14 

Family character of property, 226, 
227 

Fellowship, 198, 202 

Fifth Monarchy men, 169 

Financier, 24 

Forms of property — 

clear division into public and 

private impossible, 225 
corporation ov^Tiership, 229 
developments under English com- 
mon law, 226 
family claims, 226 
influence of Roman law, 226 
ownership by unincorporated so- 
cieties, 233 
"strict settlement" of land, 228 
Trade Union o\^Tiership, 234 
Trust ownership, 232 

Fox, G,, 167 

Freedom. See Liberty 

French Revolution, 187 et seq. 

Gambling, 83 
Gavelkind, custom of, 47 
General will, 31 

Germany, land alienation in medi- 
aeval, 17 



God, Essays IV., V., and VI. pas- 
sim 
biblical idea of, 90 et seq. 
Divine sanction, xvi, 90 et seq., 

157 et seq. 
fatherhood of, 98 
sovereign rights, 90, 202 
stewardship. See Stewardship 

Good, general. See Well-being 

Good works, Puritan view of, 163 

Government, authority of. See 
State authority 
evolution of responsible, 85 

Gratian, 40, 127 et seq. 

Green, Professor Thomas Hill, 60 

Gregory of Nazianzus, 103 

Grey, 4, 14 

Grotius, 149 

Guanas, 19 

Haddon, 16 

Haldane, Lord, xii 

Hall, Dr. T. C, 177 

Hammond, 20, 22 

Harnack, xviii, xxiii, 114 

Harrison, Major-General, 171 

Hebrew ideas, 86-98 

Hegel, 56, 57, 59, 181 

Highways, limited rights of public 

to, 222 
Hobbes, 42 et seq., 84,, 165, 166, 

182, 187 
Hobhouse, Professor, 208 
Hobson, 160 
Hooker, R., 157 
Hooper, John, 147 
Horace, xxiii 
Hosea, 93 

Houses, communal occupation, 17 
Housing and Town Planning Act, 

214 n., 218 
Humanity, religious view of, 90, 

111 
Hume, 50 et seq. 

Idealism, 32, 183 
Idealism, German, 59, 191 



240 



PEOPERTY 



Illumination, the, 149, 150 
Income — 

capability, a criterion as to, 81 
capital, distinction from, 79 
Independents, 148 
Individual v. State ownership of 

property, 225 
Individualism, xix, 23, 29, 37, 49, 

58, 95 ; Essays III., IV., and 

VI. passim, 185 et seq., 196 
Puritan movement, effect of, xix, 

145 et seq. 
restriction of ownership due to, 

30, 192, 193 
Individuality, social side of, 196 
Industrial system, rise of, 23, 144, 

166, 167, 183, 187 
Inheritance, 14, 48, 66, 81 
Initiative, 82, 85, 160 
Instinct, 6 
Interest, 66, 146, 149 et seq. See 

also Usury 
Investments, 23, 24, 146 
Iroquois, 11, 17 
Isaiah, 93 

Jeremiah, 95 

Jesus Christ, xvii, 98 et seq. 

Job, 96 

John the Baptist, 97 

Justice — 

early Christian view of, 109 et 
seq., 121, 130 et seq. 

utilitarian view of, 51 
Juxon, Bishop, 148 



Kant, 55 et seq., 58 

Karaya tribes, 17 

Kayans, 17 

Kiffin, William, 155 

Kingdom of God, Essay IV. passim. 

170 
Knox, John, 150 



Labour, 10, 22, 27 et seq., 41 et 
seq., 74, 131, 160, 163, 187, 
192, 193 



Labour (contd.) — 

control by means of property, 10 3 
modern economic conditions, 22,!^ 

23, 192, 193 
oppressive conditions of, 16^ i 
Puritan view of, 160 et seq. 
right to products of labour, ■ 

theory of, 10, 27 et seq., 411 

et seq., 74, 131, 132, 187 
Lactantius, 109-112 
Laissez-faire, 59, 145, 149, 152, 166 3 
Land, 4., 12 et seq., 93 
Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, 

213 
Lang, 14 
Latimer, Hugh, xix, 146, 157, 172 
Laud, 148 et seq. 
Law, William, 167 
Law of Property in England, Es 

say VIII. 
Legal conceptions of property, 208 
Legislative interference with pro 

prietary rights, 218 
Leonard, Miss, 152 
Levellers, 156, 170, 172 
Leviticus, 94 
Levy, Hermann, 144, 152 
Liberty, xiv, 9, 62 et seq., 183, 187 

et seq. 
Libraries Act, Free, 58 
Licensing Act, 218 and n. 
Light Railways Act, 214, 215 n. 
Lilburne, 171 
Liquor traffic, 170 



I^Locke, 27 et seq., 43 et seq., 74, 132, 
187 
Lollard movement, 143, 170 
Lord's Prayer, the, 118, 121 
Lucian, xvii 
Luther, 143, 146, 161, 162, 186 



Mackworth, Sir Humphrey, 153 

Maitland, Professor, 21, 221 

Malachi, 97 

Manorial system, 18, 20 

Married Women's Property Act, 227 



INDEX 



241 



/l&T&hsiXl, Professor, 144 
tlarx, Karl, 49, 52, 162 
tibaya, 19 

^eajis of production. See Produc- 
tion, means of 
Vlediaeval theological theory, xix, 

125-139 
Vfessianic idea, 97 
Methodists, 169 
M[eyer, Dr. Johannes, 149 
Mieah, 93, 95 
Milton, 161 
Monarchy- — 

limitation of powers, 43 
Piiritau attitude towards, 153 
Monasteries, suppression of, 144 
Monastic ideal, 121, 132 
Money bills, supremacy of House 
of Commons in regard to, 217 
Money-lending, 38, 105, 138 
Monopolies, 79, 80, 83, 154 et seq,, 
165 
Parliamentary opposition to 
Stuart monopolies, 147 
Morgan, 17 
Morice, Father, 16 
Mosaic law, 92, 147, 151, 165 
Milnster, 156, 170 

Natural law, xix, 25 et seq., 39, 42, 
75, 126, 130, 133 et seq., 150, 
165, 182, 188, 209, 215, 216 

Necessaries of life, right of man- 
kind to, xix, 137, 156 

Nehemiah, 96 

New South Wales, tribal land sys- 
tem, 5 

Nieboer, 20 

Niewenhuis, 17 

Nobility, origin in tribal military 
organization, 19 

Nonconformists, 162 

Oecupaiio, 41 
Oppression, 95, 163 
Orme's lAfe of Eipn, 155 



Parliament, sovereignty of, 213, 

215 
Parliament Act, 217 
Pastoral tribes, conditions among, 

19 
Patristic theory, 126 et seq., 155, 

184 
Penn, William, 148 
Personality, xiv et seq., 29, 56, 57, 

115, 122, 185 et seq., 195 et 

seq. See also Character 
social character of, xxii, 197 
Petermann, Dr., 14 
Philanthropy. See Charity 
Philosophical theory, 37-68, 126 
Piety, Lactantius's view of, 110 
Plato, 25, 37, 133 
Pleasure — • 

genera,! well-being, distinction 

from, 42, 43, 50, 60, 61 
Puritan view of, 161 
"Police power," in the United 

States, 216 
Political control, 17, 84, 
Poor relief, 94, 153, 164, 168, 172, 

174, 185, 190. See also Charity 
Population, effect of over-popula- 
tion among primitive peoples, 

19 
Post-Exilic prophets, 96 
Power, association of property 

with, xiv, 10, 18 et seq., 79 et 

seq., 193 
Preaching of Peter, The, 103 
Presbyterians, 157 
Price, Puritan view of, 151, 163, 

165 
Primitive peoples, conditions 

among, 4, 13 ef seq. 
Private bill legislation, 213 
Private property, regard of the law 

for, 211 
Privy Council, 148, 153 
Production, means of, 22, 33, 78 

et seq. See also Capital 
State control, 33, 84, 85 



242 



PEOPEETY 



Proprietary rights, legislative in- 
terference with, 217, 218 

Protestant Eeformation. See Ref- 
ormation 

Provisional Orders, procedure, 213, 
214 

Psychological basis of property, 8 

Puritanism, 144-177 

Public, the, duty of property own- 
ers to, 221, 235 

Quakers, 162, 167-169 
Queen Elizabeth's Primer, prayer 
in, 189 

Rauschenbusch, W., 97 
Reformation, influence of, xix, 143- 

177, 185 
Religious ideas of property. Es- 
says IV., v., and VI. 
Rent, 147, 165 
Rights of property — 
common lands, 223 
duties of neighbouring owners, 

220 
highways and rights of way, 222 
law of trespass, 221 
meaning of the phrase, 217 
obligations of owners to the pub- 
lic, 221, 235 
privileged position, 234 
solidity against other claims, 
219 
Responsibility, private property 
and, 23, 77, 84; Essays IV., 
v., and VI. passim 
Riches, See Wealth 
Rights of way, public, 222, 223 n. 
Ritchie, Professor, 60 
Roman Empire, difficulties, of early 

Christians under, 114 et seq. 
Roman law regarding public and 

private property, 225 
Roth, Ling, 17 

Rousseau, 183, 187, et seq., 197 
Russian mir, 18 

St. Ambrose, 127 et seq., 136 



St. Augustine, 128, 130 et seq., ISl 

et seq., 184 
St. Gregory, 130 
St. Hilary of Poitiers, 128 
St. Jerome, 136 
St. Matthew, 99 
St. Paul, 102, 116 
St. Peter, 103, 116 
St. Peter Damian, 135 
St. Thomas Aquinas, xix, 134 ei 

seq. 
Salvian, 128 
Schoolmen, mediaeval, 133 et seq.,,,. 

185 i 

Schroder, 17, 19 1 

Seligmann, Dr. and Mrs., 11 i 

Seneca, 115, 127 ] 

Serfdom, 19 ' 

Settled Land Acts, 229 
Shaftesbury, Lord, 176 
Shepherd of Hermas, The, 104 
Shushwaps, 16 
Simpkinson, 171 
Simmel, 65 

Sin, ownership impaired by, 173 
Slavery, xiv, 19, 20, 93, 114 et seq. 
early Christian view of, 114 et ' 

seq., 118, 119 
Social contract, 182 et seq. 
Social reform, 31, 32, 66, 67, 85, 

93, 98, 121, 171 
early Christian view of, 118, 119 
Hebraic tendencies, 92 et seq. 
Socialism, 30 et seq., 49, 53, 65, 66, 

78 
Communism, distinction from,, 

30, 31, 78 
Society, recognition by and protec- 
tion of, 72 et seq. 
Socrates, 186 
Sombart, 159 
Spencer, Herbert, 58 
Star Chamber, 152 
State authority, xvi, xx, 40-43, 55 > 

et seq., 116, 131 et seq., 139, , i 

154, 199 i 



INDEX 



243 



tate control, xvi, xxi, 33, 58, 59, 
84, 130, 176, 188, 200 

3tate endowment 82, 83 

State ownership, 33. See also 
Communal ownership and So- 
cialism 

State V. individual ownership of 
property, 225 

'Statute of Merton, 224 

Stephen, Sir James, 176 

Stewardship to God, xi, 92, 99, 107, 
158 et seq,, 163, 165, 169, 175, 
177, 185, 196, 202 

[Stoicism, xix, xxiii, xxiv, 39, 112, 

:i 127 

^'Strict settlement" of land, 229 

Stuart*, 147 

S wanton, 15 

Tawney, 20 et seq. 

Taxation, 43, 44, 58, 59, 190 

Taylor, Jeremy, 163, 166 

Teaching of the Apostles, The^ 103 

Tertullian, 108 

Testament, Old and New. See Bib- 
lical ideas 

Theft, xix, 11, 45, 46, 136, 155 
necessity, theory of extreme, xix, 
156 

Thlinkeets, 15 

Torres Straits, 16 

Trades, morally doubtful, 104, 170 

Trades Boards Act, 163 

Trade unions, 199 

ownership of property, 234 

Trespass, law of, 221 

IVibal conditions. See Primitive 
peoples, conditions among 

Troeltsch, 144 

Truelove, Samuel, 154 

Trusts, ownership of property by, 
232 

Tsimshian, 16 

Tioo Ways, The, 101 

Tyndale, William, 143 



Ulpian, 130 

Unemployment, 154 

Uniformity, Act of, 162 

United States — 

expropriation for public pur- 
poses, 216 
protection of property under 
Constitution, 216 

Use, association of property wdth, 
xiv, 9, 18, 27, 28, 48, 76 et seq., 
134, 135, 137 

Usury, 38, 105, 146, 150 

Utilitarianism, 41 et seq.f 48 et 
seq., 57, 58 

Veddas, 11, 12, 15 

Vinogradoff, 20 

Voluntary associations, 81, 82, 176 

Von Martins, 16 



Wealth- 
creation of, 74 
distribution, 37, 50, 61, 62 
early Christian indifference to, 

111, 113, 116, 117 
inequalities of, divine sanction 

of, 159 
inequalities of, general consent 

to, 27, 28 
inequalities of, origin and de- 
velopment of, 18 et seq. 
Puritan View of use of, 106, 145 

et seq., 157, 160 
responsibilities of, 172, 174 
spiritual handicap of riches, 105 
Weber, Max, 144 

Well-being, promotion of, 42, 43, 
53 et seq., 60, 75, 92, 99, 156, 
158, 163 
Wesley, John, 160, 167 
Whitgift, 156 
Wilberforce, William, 175 
Woolman, John, 174 
Wyclif, John, 143, 173, 184 



? ^ Q ^ i 






xV 



^^^ 






.■^ 









.f.^^o 



cP- 



1V^ 






.Vv^' ^^- 



."^•Ci 



■^ / * X -* ^0 



\^' 



'^, 



''^^■<y^ 



>jxy 






'tp ^ 



^ f it ir '^ 






.^ 






^ .^^^/Thp. , 






^- 



o 



ci*. 









0^ ,^^- 



^' 



.V v> 



^^^ -^ * -ft 






^^^^ 



_ -.^]^^^^^^ ^^ -^ 



H -^^ 









S 









■^•- 






>A v^' 



^^' 









,v^^^/ 



V- 



^ o. 

^ <_-! 

-? 



.0^ 



^.. ."^^ 



O ( 









^^^ic^' 



\\^ 



% c,V-^ 



.o« 



1 o 



^0 



V t^ 



